The Mayan Magician and Other Stories

the mayan magician and other stories

jim musgrave

“With the publication of The Mayan Magician and Other Stories, Jim Musgrave joins the ranks of the George Saunders, Steven Millhauser and Kevin Brockmeier at the heart of the modern American short story’s second great renaissance. Musgrave writes with commanding authority of both the past and the future, of adventures at home and abroad.

He is a skilled stylist and a powerful raconteur.

Musgrave’s characters are memorable, courageous, and—like his prose—intensely compelling.” – Jacob M. Appel, Winner of the 2012 $10,000 Dundee International Fiction Prize (The Man Who Wouldn’t Stand Up)

the mayan magician

and other stories jim musgrave

CIC PUBLISHERS SAN DIEGO Copyright Š 2009 by Jim Musgrave

Copyright Š 2009 by Jim Musgrave Published by Jim Musgrave at Smashwords All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

First published in 2009 by CIC Publishers ISBN: 0-9776503-8-3 Design by CIC Publishers Cover and Illustration Art by Ari Bernabei (aribernabei@att.net) CIC Publishers 6784 Caminito del Greco San Diego, CA 92120

For Ellen, our love never ends

the mayan magician and other stories jim musgrave

The following stories have been previously published in the following magazines or online ezines: “Zinggong” on Sniplits.com “Audio Stories 2-Go” “What Were You When You Were Alive?” on Sniplits.com “Audio Stories 2-Go” “Fireman” in The Writer’s Eye Magazine, thewriterseye.com “Turning the Law Wheel,” Honorable Mention in the Cedar Hill Press Short Fiction Contest

Cover and Illustration Art: Ari Bernabei (aribernabei@att.net) Visit the Mayan Magician Blog: http://mayanmagician.wordpress.com

Contents Contents...................................................................9 The Mayan Magician....................................................1 Prologue: “The Dream”...............................................1 Chapter 1: “The Windup” ..........................................2 Chapter 2: “The Pitch”................................................6 Chapter 3: “Strike One” ..............................................................................15 Chapter 4: “Strike Two” .........................................................................28 Chapter 5: “Strike Three”..........................................40 Epilogue: “You’re Out!”.............................................51 Zinggong.................................................................53 What Were You When You Were Alive?.........................70 ............................................................................88 Turning the Law Wheel.............................................88 La Casa de Raphael...................................................98 The Lady or the Tiger?.............................................114 Sirens....................................................................119 Texting..................................................................130 The Siamese...........................................................142 Singing Angel of the Rumspringa...............................157 Fireman.................................................................167 Labyrinth...............................................................177

Taxi......................................................................189 The Curse of O. Henry’s Ghost..................................204 The Peek-a-Boo Man................................................212 The Web of Love.....................................................221 If You Put Lipstick on a Witch....................................234 What We Talk About When We Talk About Death ............................................................................246 The Sunset Unlimited...............................................251 The West Nile Passover............................................265 The Judgment.........................................................276 The Pitch of Abraham...............................................281 The Ghouly Gal.......................................................294 The Aquaphobe.......................................................309 The Reluctant Zombie..............................................320 The Train Ride........................................................324 Killer Angels...........................................................328

1 "Like some cult religion that barely survives, there has always been at least one but rarely more than five or six devotees throwing the knuckleball in the big leagues... Not only can't pitchers control it, hitters can't hit it, catchers can't catch it, coaches can't coach it, and most pitchers can't learn it. The perfect pitch." -Ron Luciano, former AL umpire.

The Mayan Magician

Prologue: “The Dream”

I turned around, thinking that he was discouraged, but he caught me by the arm before I could leave. He was a tall, blonde and strong man of thirty-something, and I could see the sun going down behind him above the trees, and the Mayan ruins that were all around this hotel gave me a sudden vision of a scene from the recent movie, Apocalypto, and it made me wince. I saw myself at the top of Chichen Itza's giant El Castillo. In slow motion, the priest’s sword lopped off the head of the sacrificial victim, and this head was promptly handed to me, and I was wearing the colorful robes and feathers of a priestess. I smiled, went into my windup, and threw the head. Instead of rolling down the steps of the pyramid, however, the head flew into the air like a knuckleball, dipping and floating crazily down to the bottom.

2

Chapter 1: “The Windup” I was born in Oxtapakab, a very small Mayan pueblo almost an hour south of Merida, but my family worked in a tourist hotel on the beach in Merida. As a child and tomboy, I played baseball with my four brothers, who grew-up to play minor league baseball for the Yucatán Leones. I always expected I would one day go along with them when they left to play ball at the Parque Kukulkán in Merida. And that is exactly what I did.

But first, I learned how to throw the knuckleball from an American, Joe Meister, who had dropped out of the San Diego Padres organization because of his drinking habits and moved down south where the rules weren’t so strict toward pitchers who liked to enjoy a beer every hour or so. Did I mention that throwing a knuckler is an art form?

Yes, it is, and I, Isabel Juanita Perez-Velasquez, or “Dipsie Izzie” and “The Mayan Magician,” as I was called in the National League during my season there, became the best artiste of this one pitch that there ever was.

I suppose this is one of the main reasons why I was hated by so many of the major league batters I came up against. First, I was a woman, and I was the first woman ever to be signed to a major league contract. Second, I threw “butterflies,” which to major leaguers is the equivalent of a pro soccer player trying to stop another player who can scramble around like a prima ballerina. Or, it’s like a basketball player who has to try to shoot into a basket that keeps moving on him.

3 Joe Meister taught me how to throw the pitch while he was vacationing at the hotel where I worked in Merida. The Hacienda Xcanatun is a picturesque 18th Century Mayan coastal resort with 18 rooms. Joe found out I was a pitcher when I was tossing large bars of soap down the hallway outside his suite to the other maids who would catch them on the fly and put them inside the bathrooms.

“Hey, ése es un poco de brazo que usted tien,” he told me, sticking his head out the door.

“I know. I pitch to my brothers who play for the Yucatan Lions,” I said, and that’s how Joe found out I spoke fluent English, which I had learned from the British Catholic Priest in my village, Father Gerald Cook.

“That’s a coincidence!” said Joe. “I pitch for them.”

That’s when I told him I wanted to learn to pitch for them also, and I wanted him to teach me. The look on my face was deadly serious, and Joe knew right away that this fivefoot-four Mayan female had the courage to learn. “You do understand that the Mexican leagues don’t permit women to play?” he pointed out.

“I know that the Lions are in last place. I also know from my brothers that baseball is a business and that if they believe they can win with me on the mound, then they will make an exception,” I said. “However, I would like to learn a pitch that will make me an equal with the men. Do you know of such a pitch, señor?”

Yes, Joe knew of such a pitch, and it actually surprised him to think there had been no American woman who had thought of this before. It made sense. Throwing the knuckleball did not require a man’s strength or stamina.

In fact, power was a liability. Also, a woman’s smaller

4 hand would make it easier to grip the ball the way the knuckler required.

“Tell you what. I’ve got some gloves and a ball in my room. You’ve got a pretty mean margarita that you serve in your cantina. I’ll meet you in the tropical garden in fifteen minutes. It has a long stretch of grass where we can practice throwing. You meet me there with about a dozen of those margaritas, and I’ll show you how to pitch the equalizer, the knuckleball.”

Joe Meister didn’t know it that day but what he was about to teach me was to be officially inscribed on a piece of laminated parchment on a plaque with my picture, inside a glass case, inside the Cooperstown Baseball Hall of Fame.

His instructions to me will also forever be emblazoned in the memories of the 257 major league baseball men who went down swinging that year I pitched for the Padres, swatting vainly at Izzie’s floating dipster. How quickly I adapted to these instructions to create my unique brand of knuckleball was what made me “the magician”: “To get a perfect knuckleball grip, hold out your thumb, and the first two fingers. Then place your thumb tip and first two fingertips on the ball all at the same time, and not on any seams. Then push the ball with your left hand into the palm of your right hand, leaving your fingertips in place. Your fingers will curl. Then use your ring finger and/or pinky to gently hold the ball so it won't slide out the side of your hand. Some people use only the ring finger; others use just the pinky and place the knuckle of the ring finger against the ball. It's really whatever you’re comfortable with and whatever works. Most people try different grips until they get one to work consistently.

“Then rev back and throw it. Remember, don't snap your wrist down like a fastball, and don't push the ball like a

5 shot-put. It's a relatively normal throwing motion. Let the forward momentum of your arm create speed on the ball as it rests against the palm, and then let your fingers push the ball out when the momentum shifts to the release point. You'll find that you release the ball a little earlier than if you were throwing a fastball, mainly because of the grip. You'll take your ring and/or pinky finger off of the ball just before you release and just as you start to push the ball out with your fingertips.”

By the time the sun was setting over the garden, there were fifteen tourists standing and marveling at the darkskinned, twenty-four-year-old, in the maid’s uniform, who was tossing flutter balls with accuracy to her American coach. In a few hours, I had mastered the grip and had developed a wind-up that I would gradually perfect, in the months to come, until Joe believed I was indeed ready for my audition with the Lions. My future agent was one of those tourists that day, and he introduced himself to me after Joe was exhausted and needed to reinforce his alcoholic constitution inside the hotel cantina.

“Good evening, Miss Velasquez. My name is Andrew Wilmington. I am an agent for professional athletes in San Diego, California. I was watching your progress with quite some interest. Have you ever thought of contracting yourself with a professional women’s’ softball team? In fact, I am in touch with some very . . .”

“Excuse me, but I am contracting with the Yucatan Lions.

I want to play professional baseball,” I said. “My brothers play for them, and I want to join them. Come with me to my village, señor. I will show you why I want to pitch,” I told Mr. Wilmington, taking his hand as the sun finally sank behind us into the ocean’s waves.

6

Chapter 2: “The Pitch” We drove out to my village in the twilight, and I couldn’t see anything outside, except the grass and the twin dirt paths made from the many used cars and trucks that had gone before us, which I watched in the headlights’ beam.

I told Mr. Wilmington a story about a governor of Merida, one Felipe Carillo, who fell in love with an American, Alma Reed, a writer for the New York Times, during the early 1920s.

“We still sing a song about them, and they are my personal patron saints.

Carrillo formed ejidos, or communal farms, legalized birth control, gave women the right to vote and had the constitution translated into Mayan. Our people thought we might be saved from abject poverty.”

He was curious. “What happened?”

I flashed him a dark look, as the engine in my old Ford Explorer popped angrily. “Reed and Carrillo promptly fell in love, and he nicknamed her Peregrino, or pilgrim. Her articles helped Mexico to recover artifacts Americans had pillaged from the ruins. The lovers planned to marry in January 1924, and Reed returned home to San Francisco to prepare. Days before the wedding, hacienda owners angered by Carrillo's reforms marched him, with Reed's intended wedding band in his hand, to Merida's cemetery and executed him by firing squad. The bullet holes are still visible in the wall near his grave.”

7 “How tragic! I can see why you admire them.”

“Yes, the Maya was once a powerful civilization, but the Spanish and now the gringos have taken it over. We work as laborers for their tourist investments. Many people believe we want to bring back our past, but they are wrong. We want modern advancements, just like you have. iPods, cell phones, health care, air conditioning, you name it. But we cannot advance as long as we are conquered to be peasants, just because we are Maya.”

We pulled into the hacienda, and it consisted of one main building, where an elderly Mexican family, the Ortegas, still lived, but the main Mayan population, about two-hundred families, lived in small, thatch-roofed huts and concrete blocked houses that faced the concrete strip running down the middle of the road. There were only two street lamps powered by an old gas engine generator that could be heard chugging into the night, and as we pulled in front of the three concrete blocks that I said were my family’s home, I couldn’t help but again feel sadness for these once-noble natives.

Conquered by the Spanish, subjugated by the Mexican Government in cooperation with the North American investment community, we were now banished to the pueblos next to the old haciendas of our colonial overlords.

Inside the largest building, which served as our family’s living room, my four brothers, Juan, Pedro, Alfonzo and Ricardo, were watching the Mexican National Soccer Team on the tiny color television set, up above in the corner.

There was also a long display of holy articles and flowers on a wooden shrine next to the wall. The rest of the room was furnished with inexpensive chairs and a small couch from Merida’s new Wal-Mart, covered with a multicolored, homemade Indian blanket. The mother of our family,

8 Dolores, was sitting on the couch with a bowl of fruit, which she was carefully slicing up for dinner. Our father, Alonzo, had died three years before from a heart attack.

His picture was up on the same religious shrine in the center of the room.

“You must excuse my family,” I said. “They can only speak Spanish. I am the only one who finished school with Father Gerald. I try to teach my brothers some English, in case they get drafted by the Padres, up north, but they haven’t learned much. Es correcto, mi hermanos?

Ustedes estáis un manojo de burros, no?”

Each man stood up and shook Mr. Wilmington’s hand.

“Es un agente para los jugadores del béisbol en América,” I told them, and their eyes brightened.

After I explained to my family that I had today learned a new pitch that was going to get me into professional baseball, not one of them seemed to scoff. I have a strange power over my family, as if they believed I was, indeed, a magical creature.

As we ate dinner with him that night, Mr. Wilmington also became convinced that I would succeed in my baseball quest. He told my family that I seemed to exude that spark of desire he had seen in other athletes—mostly males—but it was the same flash which told him I would do anything and pay any price to achieve personal greatness.

9 “It is the same spirit that harkens back to those boys who pitched against barns in rural America. There is also the present crop of Caribbean and Mexican players who sacrifice time and energy on the rock-pitted playing fields, playing until dark, playing until their hands are blistered, their knees and elbows are bloodied, and their muscles are sore, playing until they get that call from the men in those offices far above them. These owners know the spark that I know so well and who know the glow that separates these athletes from the masses of others who have neither the talent nor the urgent dream to get them to the top of the heap.” He smiled at me as I translated his words, and, one month later, he negotiated my first contract with the Yucatan Leones. *** Even though my baseball career was taking off, my personal life was becoming more complicated. After my father died, Father Gerald began to play a more personal role in our family. As a result, he would often come by after school to spend time at our hacienda to tutor me in English.

My brothers would always leave to go play baseball and so we were left inside alone. My mother was off doing chores, planting in the garden or shopping at the open-air market in Merida.

Father Gerald is a priest who has a kind face, prematurely white hair, and his hands are soft and warm. I missed my own father’s warm caresses, so when the priest began to touch me, I did not think much of it at first. He would sing songs in my ear and rub my back and shoulders as he did so. He would always tell me how fast I was learning English and that I could even go to college someday if I wanted it. “You are my very best student, Isabel,” he

10 said. “I know your father would have been very proud of you.”

I learned quite a lot of English from Father Gerald. I learned how to properly use verbs, write in long hand, and read many books. He brought me the entire collection of Charles Dickens and a book on the lives of the saints.

However, after I reached puberty, his visits became much more frequent, and he began to fondle me.

I could smell alcohol on his breath during these visits, and his eyes were red, and his face was flushed. “I want to read you some new poetry,” he told me, and then he would begin to read some very strange verse that he told me was from the Bible. However, he added, “This is the first Bible, and the Jews were interested in the beauty of the female body.”

He then began to read, a different section each night, and as he did so he began touching me all over. For example, this verse was used as he caressed my stomach, my breasts, and my head and throat: “Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor: thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies. Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins. Thy neck is as a tower of ivory; thine eyes like the fishpools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bathrabbim: thy nose is as the tower of Lebanon which looketh toward Damascus.”

At first, I blamed myself for his advances. If I weren’t so attractive then he would not have wanted me. If I weren’t so lonely for my father then I wouldn’t have felt so excited when he touched me. The feelings inside me were a mixture of guilt, thrilling expectation and shame.

When he started having me touch him, I vowed to myself that each time would be the last time. However, each

11 week, he would come back, and I would do it again, until I cried out in my bed at night from fear that I was going to one day kill him so it would all end. I was afraid to tell my family, so it all became my dark secret, and I would go into a fantasy each time he molested me. I fantasized that I was a Mayan priestess, and that I was charged with the duty of slicing the heads off of the sacrificial victims to pay homage to our Plumed Serpent and God of War, Kukulkán.

The vision became so real that I could actually see fear in the eyes of the priest, Father Gerald, as I touched him, and I got great satisfaction from this look of terror, as I imagined lopping off the head of his penis.

Even though I had my four brothers playing with me on the Lions, I was a lightning rod for all the catcalls and sexist taunts from the other teams. The games I pitched were always heavily attended, but everybody was expecting to see me fail. There was even the Mexican equivalent of a hate group that formed at the very first game I pitched. We were playing the Monterrey Sultanes, in Monterrey, and the group was a bunch of men who got together because they wanted to keep women out of baseball. They called themselves the “Macho Muchachos,” and they drank beer, talked dirty and sat behind the visiting team’s dugout.

That day, after Sanchez and Benitez hit towering home runs off of me in the second inning, the Muchachos were all over me with, “Get out of town, you bitch!” And, “Baseball ain’t for women!”

When I walked the bases loaded in the fourth, the Muchachos were even louder. One of them began to lead cheers of derision in front of the stands, and many people were taunting and laughing at me. I was losing control of my knuckler, and my brother, Alfonzo, might as well have had a butterfly net behind the plate to catch them. My pitches were floating and darting over the batters’ heads

12 and into the dirt in all directions. I even thought for a moment that I’d made the wrong decision about getting into professional baseball. But then, the vision came to me again--the one about being a priestess of Kukulkán-and, almost like magic, my control began to return. I imagined I was lopping off the heads of the hitters in the Sultane’s lineup, aiming the ball just at the tops of their heads, as if I were raising my sword, and the ball would float down and in, mesmerizing them for one delicious moment with its slow, tantalizing look of “hit me,” and then dart down and away for a swinging strike.

I was able to shut the Machos up, and I would never be in that particular predicament again. Pitching success has a way of silencing all critics, and my artistry over the knuckler proved my worth to the team over the weeks to come, as we settled into first place, above the Sultanes, and headed into the playoffs.

As a rookie, of course, I was subjected to more practical jokes than the average first-year player. They made me wear mismatched clothing to hotels, and they put chorizos inside the fingers of my glove. Probably the most creative joke was when Jaime Alvarez, our first baseman, put talcum powder in my electric hair dryer. When I turned it on, my black hair turned immediately white, and I looked like newly elected President Calderon’s wife as she appeared in a humorous cartoon that week in La Jornada.

"If the poor have no tortillas, let them eat cake!" cries out Mexico's first lady, dressed as Marie-Antoinette, standing next to her husband, President Felipe Calderón, wearing a powdered wig and lace frill. The price of tortillas had gone up forty percent, and the president and his wife were being blamed for it just as I was being blamed for being a woman in a man’s sport. In Mexico, being a celebrity came with a price on your head.

13 In one interview I had with top sports reporter, Pedro Feriz, I was accused of being part of the importation of over-priced American goods and feminista values.

However, when he began accusing me of being part of the Norte Americano’s female rights movement, I lashed out with, “I am offended by your remarks. I give most of my salary to my pueblo to buy food and clothing for our poor Mayan peasants. What about their human rights? We Maya have been discriminated against for centuries!” After that interview, a lot of women started going to the games when I pitched, and I suppose my success on the Lions caused many arguments in households all across Mexico. I also received letters from women and from the growing internet organization for women called Modemmujer, modeled after the North American’s National Organization for Women (N.O.W.). They sent me emails and letters praising my pitching and telling me to keep competing for the betterment of women everywhere.

One of the only dark spots in my first year as a professional playing for Merida came when I received warnings from the local drug cartel’s leader, Jose “Felix” Ochoa. The money I was giving to my pueblo gave my people new hope. This ran counter to the drug dealers in that they could no longer recruit so many of my people to do their bidding as “drug mules,” smuggling heroin and other drugs across the border to sell in the States. I had difficulty hiring workers to construct new homes in my pueblo because Ochoa controlled most of the union activity in our locale. As a result, Ochoa and his men would set fires to the construction sites and workers would “disappear,” never to return. I was very frightened by his threats, but I continued to support my people. What is there to live for if you cannot help the ones you love?

14 My family was very happy with my decision to play baseball, even though they knew nothing about my previous experiences with Father Gerald. He still came to see us, as my mother is a strict Catholic, but I made certain I was not around the house when he visited. I still felt emptiness in my soul, and I really did not know how I would ever conquer my fear of the priest and of death in general. I had many nightmares about my dead father.

He would always appear to me as a Mayan chief, and I was always the priestess. He never said a word to me, but he would point toward the pyramid and I would go to climb up onto the lofty platform to do my duty as the executioner.

Different sacrificial victims would appear before me; one time it was Father Gerald, once it was Jose Ochoa, and another time it was my own father. I would always wake up screaming, totally afraid of who would appear next.

Behind everything, I knew, was the great God, Kukulkรกn, waiting for the prophecy to occur. This prophecy, of course, was that in the year 2012, on the Winter Solstice of December twenty-first, the world as we know it will be destroyed.

15

Chapter 3: “Strike One” I suppose it was easier for me to sign with the Padres because they already had broken the “female barrier,” so to speak, when they hired a woman to be their traveling massage therapist. They got a lot of flak from players and coaches around the league, but when Keith Hernandez, the announcer for the New York Mets, remarked on the air that “Women don’t belong in the dugout,” the owner of the Padres, Larry Masters, dug in his heels about the whole issue. “We believe women belong anywhere they can be of service in baseball.” And, when asked if he also thought a woman could be playing some day, he said, “Certainly.

If she could add something to my team’s lineup, then she would play for me.”

I knew playing in the majors would be a totally different experience for me. These were men who did everything to succeed or to get an up on the other players. For example, the knuckleball was called the “dry spitter” because Eddie “Knuckles” Cicotte of the Chicago White Sox, the pitcher who is given credit for using the pitch for the first time in the 1900s, used the knuckler as a companion for the then legal spit ball that he also threw.

Eddie also went on to pitch for the infamous Chicago Black Sox of 1919. It seems that throughout history; whenever someone invented something to use to get an edge, the law would come down to stop it. The spit ball, the sharpened cleats of Ty Cobb, the dirty play of the Gas House Gang, the gambling of the Black Sox and Pete Rose, up until the modern games with players taking steroids and other drugs to hit mammoth home runs and steal over

16 100 bases, the baseball authorities found a way to correct the rules, so I wondered what would happen when and if I became the first female player in the game? What would stop them from banning the knuckler? How would I stand the racist remarks, the physical confrontations at the plate and on the base paths, where pitchers in the National League had to come to bat, or the hazing from the fans and from the press?

I was thinking about all these things and more when Andrew Wilmington entered Larry Masters’ office to negotiate my contract. In a wise move, Masters had banned all the press from being anywhere on the premises, so at least they could talk in private.

Masters, who was also a member of corporate boards of directors, the University of California Board of Regents, and, of course, president and CEO of his own successful computer company, Y-Shield, knew how to negotiate.

According to Mr. Wilmington, he also knew that even if I were a mediocre pitcher in the big leagues, I would still be worth a lot of money at the turnstiles because I would be the first woman in professional baseball. It would be worth the risk, in other words, to do what was needed to get me on the team.

As Andrew Wilmington told me later, Masters was seated behind his big mahogany desk, with his loafers up and a cigar in his mouth. He was a big man, over six foot five, and he had played college ball, so his body was still trim and fit. There were telltale circles under his eyes, however, which were the mark of a man whose team was in last place in the standings. This was another good negotiating signal for my side. He motioned with his hand for Andrew to sit in the leather chair in front of him.

17 “That’s good. We’ll save the handshake for later,” said Masters, running a hand through his thinning red hair.

“Let’s hear what’s on the table, Mister Wilmington. I’m a busy man.”

“Sir, did you know that the Washington Senators, during the war year of 1945, had four knuckleball pitchers in their starting rotation who combined for 60 victories and 60 complete games? They needed something to equalize their staff, and they found it. They also finished in second place. As you know today, there are only two knuckleball pitchers in the major leagues, Tim Wakefield on the Red Sox and Charlie Haeger on the White Sox—both in the American League.”

“That’s very interesting. But what does it have to do with Miss Velasquez?” Masters moved his cigar to the other side of his mouth and puffed deeply. Andrew said he wanted badly to ask him to put it out, as he was getting a bit nauseous, but he didn’t want to lose his momentum.

“Well, sir, my client, Isabel Velasquez, will give you a knuckleball pitcher who has been successful at the professional level for two years. In addition, she will be the first-ever woman signed to a contract by a major league team. I can see the San Diego Padres organization becoming part of history. The Padres will go down as the first team to break the sexist barrier in baseball. Not only that, but when she’s successful on the mound, as I’m certain you’ll see, the sponsors will also sign her up by the droves. That will be a real boon for a small market team like yours. In fact, look at Anna Kournakova in tennis.

She is a mediocre player, yet she is famous the world over for her photo shoots in all the major magazines. My client, also, has that kind of feminine appeal. She is a story of fortitude, as well, playing her way out of a poverty-stricken

18 pueblo in Merida to enter the best baseball organization in America, the San Diego Padres!�

Mr. Masters was sold. Thus, after I had made my mark as the pitcher with the most victories and the lowest earned run average, for a single season in Mexican League history, I had negotiated a one million dollar, one year contract with the San Diego Padres. I even got to add my brother, Alfonzo, into the deal. He was the only catcher on the team who could manage my difficult knuckleballs, so he was included, along with his gigantic catcher’s glove, in the most historic baseball signing in history. The only two items I especially wanted in the contract were to have the uniform number seven and a private dressing room. I told Andrew it was a good luck number for my people. Not since owner Branch Rickey convinced the young Black infielder, Jackie Robinson, to play for his Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, was there a greater interest in a story by the press and by the entire baseball world. *** My brother and I arrived in San Diego to appear at a press conference called by the owner, Larry Masters. It was the first time this small franchise had been covered by all major media throughout the world, and Masters was making certain he could gain the most coverage possible.

I was not prepared for what the coverage would bring to my personal life, but I was ready. My brothers and I have followed baseball in the United States all of our lives, and we understood the impact it had on the psyche of America.

The signing of the first woman to a major league contract was big news and the fact that I would be representing Mexico, in general, and the Mayan civilization, in particular, gave these journalists hundreds of different leads, and we weren’t too surprised when we were

19 bombarded with phone calls from media, wanting to set-up exclusive interviews. I decided I would need someone to handle the arrangements, so I called Andrew Wilmington, my agent, to see if he wanted the job.

“Of course! I’d be thrilled to be your press agent, Isabel,” he said.

I was calling him from my hotel room in downtown San Diego, at the U. S. Grant Hotel, which is owned by the Sycuan Band of Kumeyaay Indians, who had come into some money due to their gaming interests in the county. I made a mental note to talk with them about how they were able to negotiate with the state to gain such a franchise, but I needed to keep first things first. I told Andrew to meet me at Petco Park at two p.m. and we would discuss what he would be doing for me. I also wanted him present at the press conference introducing me to the San Diego and world communities.

My brother and I were not prepared for the big leagues.

Travel by jet aircraft instead of by bus, the media attention, the sponsors, and the modern lifestyle of San Diego, put us both into a sort of culture shock for quite awhile during those first few weeks. My oldest brother, Alfonzo, is a big man, with the typical wide body of a catcher, and he has the field marshal mentality when he is behind the plate and ordering infielders around. He is dark, like me, with black hair and brown eyes, and off the diamond he is quiet and reclusive. He knows no English other than “yes” and “no,” and, from the first moment we set foot in downtown San Diego, he became both my dependent shadow and my personal guardian.

Reporters were in the hotel lobby to greet us when we came down to go to the park for our press conference.

Even though we had quite a few members of the Mexican press following us to games, this was nothing compared to

20 the dozens of TV, newspaper and international press from fifteen countries that greeted us that day. Questions came out of the crowd, and I didn’t know who to answer first.

“Hey,Isabel! Why do they call you the ‘Mayan Magician’?”

“You gonna shower with your teammates?” “How do you think your knuckleball will work against real, big league hitters?”

I decided not to answer any questions until I met with my new press agent, Andrew Wilmington. I knew from my experiences with the press in Mexico that the wrong answer to a question could mean the loss of a sponsor’s contract or bad publicity. These days, it was all about one’s appearance and how one conducted oneself in front of the media.

San Diego is a beautiful city, with paved roads, and, like Merida, the fresh odor of the ocean filters through the breezes and gives one the impression that the landscape has been kissed by Nature’s best personality. The Mission San Diego can be seen just off the I-5 freeway, and I couldn’t help but think of all the Native Americans who were held prisoner and worked to death by the “good fathers.” Alfonzo sat beside me in the limo drive over to Petco Park, and he gazed out at the passing scenery. He had not spoken a word to me since we arrived, so I thought I would put his mind at ease about the press conference. I told him, in Spanish, that he would not have to say anything or answer any questions and that I would do all the talking. He seemed relieved, and he just patted my arm with his gnarled, catcher’s hands, and whispered to me in Spanish, “I am part of your destiny, dear sister.”

Although most of the fans who showed up at the press conference were holding signs expressing their pleasure at having me on their team, there were a few disgruntled

21 people who believed I was part of some publicity stunt put on by the Padres organization because they finished in last place the season before. I guess they didn’t watch any of the video footage the Padres had on their web site of me pitching in the Mexican League Playoffs, when I struck out a record 60 batters and won three games. “We don’t need a Feminist experiment on the Padres,” one of the banners read. Another one said, “Spend the money on some real players, Masters!”

As we entered the executive offices behind Petco Park, I spotted Andrew Wilmington. He was standing near the owner, Larry Masters, talking to some woman, who was furiously taking notes as he spoke.

Andrew looked handsome in his gray suit and blue necktie. His blonde hair contrasted with his tan, and his radiantly blue eyes were as piercing as ever when he turned to greet me.

“Izzie! I was just talking about you to Miss Sheryl Levine, here. She’s the producer for Women’s Sports at ESPN. She’s doing an exclusive feature on you, and she would like to get some shots to go with the report. Do you mind?”

The woman, tall and attractive, with round glasses and a dark complexion, took my hands in hers. “I’m so happy to meet you, Ms. Velasquez. Do you know the background of females in baseball in this country? It all began with American Little League, actually.

In 1950, Kathryn Johnston, disguised as a boy, played Little League in Corning, N.Y., and was allowed to keep playing even after she told her coach that she was a girl. In 1951, Little League officially banned girls from participating. But Maria Pepe changed all that, when the twelve-year-old Hoboken girl suited up and pitched three games for the Young Democrats. Protests send the matter to Williamsport, which ruled that Young Democrats can't play unless they

22 kick Pepe off the team. That ended Pepe's Little League career, but the National Organization for Women (NOW) sued Little League Baseball on her behalf, and in 1974 the New Jersey Superior Court ruled that girls must to be allowed to play. It didn't take long for them to make a difference -- in 1974, Bunny Taylor became the first girl to pitch a no-hitter. About 50,000 girls now officially play Little League baseball each season. And now, we have you, the first woman to pitch for a major league team!

Aren’t you excited to be here representing women all over the world?”

“Yes, of course I am,” I told her, looking down in embarrassment. “I just hope I can live up to all this attention,” I added.

“I want to interview you in private. I’ve been talking with Mr. Wilmington, and he tells me you’ll be staying at the Grant until Spring Training starts for pitchers and catchers in February. Can I call you and set-up a date? I’ll bring along our cameraman, Tony, to take some shots.” Miss Levine turned toward Andrew, seeking his approval.

“That’s right, Izzie, I think it’ll be good for your image on the team. I’ve already told Miss Levine how we met and how you’re supporting your people back home in Mexico.

She thinks it will make a great feature story for her viewers and fans.” Andrew smiled at me.

I nodded my head. “If you think it will be good, then muy bueno! I’ll be waiting for your call, Miss Levine. It’s nice to have met you.”

The young journalist shook my hand again, waved to Andrew, and took off to interview Jessie Velasco, the Padres first baseman and only member on the All Star Team from last year. Velasco wore a flamboyant Hawaiian

23 shirt, white slacks, and dark sunglasses.

He kept gesturing with his head toward me as he talked to the press surrounding him. Andrew pulled me aside so that we stood away from all the media and the commotion going on.

“Listen, Isabel. This Velasco character has been making some pretty wild statements on local radio sports talk shows. He thinks you are some kind of stunt and that you’ll never be able to compete at this level. In fact, he even stated that he believes that management is doing the fans a disservice. He said they should be spending their money on some proven talent to get the team back into contention in the Western Division.”

“Hey, I know these machos. They were the same on the Lions back home in Merida.

Once they faced my knuckleball in practice they knew I was for real. When I started fanning hitters on the opposing teams, they came around. Professional ball players know when to keep their mouths shut, and I know what to do to shut them. I win.”

I said these words without the bravado I had back home.

Somehow, the change of scenery, the fact that I was representing so much more to women of the world and to my own people, gave me a deep fear that I hoped I could shake before the bell rang and the season began. I would have a lot to prove in Spring Training camp, and I was anxious to get started.

It was at that moment when Larry Masters, the owner of the San Diego Padres, came up to me and took my arm.

“Isabel, come into my office. I want to have a word with you, if you don’t mind.”

“Why, yes sir!” I said, and I followed him into his plush suite at the corner of the executive offices. He motioned for me to be seated in the same leather chair where

24 Andrew negotiated my contract. I sat down and look around at all the photos on the walls. There were shots of Tony Gwynn, the Hall of Fame right fielder and one of the only players to stay with the Padres for his entire career.

There were also the team photos from the 1984 and 1998 teams, which had gone to the World Series, only to be defeated soundly by the Detroit Tigers and the New York Yankees.

Mister Masters noticed me looking at the photos. “You know, Ms. Valasquez, you will one day bring us to the World Series again. I have watched your scouting films, and I agree with your agent. He is a seasoned pro, and he knows when somebody can make it up here. That’s why I am building this season’s team around you,” he said, and his red eyebrows were raised as he spoke the final sentence.

“Around me?” I said, not really understanding what he meant.

“Well, the usual starting rotation in the big leagues has five players in it. However, since the knuckleball pitcher is able to throw many more pitches than the hard throwing pitcher, she can be used much more often than is conventionally proper. In addition, you have an almost magical control over your pitches. That means the danger of wild pitches is lessened considerably. Therefore, I plan on using you on three days’ rest rather than the usual five.”

“Yes, I agree, sir, but don’t you think the opposition will be able to pick-up on my pitches more easily if I pitch that frequently?” I said, and I could feel the tension and fear growing in my stomach. “I am not so naïve as to think I will be able to overpower major league hitters that easily,”

25 I added, hoping he would not think I was afraid of the competition but was just being a realist.

“No, I have confidence in you, Ms. Velasquez. In fact, I am going to make some improvements in our park based on the science of Dr. Joseph Federline of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. As a physicist, Dr. Federline took it upon himself to study the knuckleball and how it can be used most effectively. He has convinced me that because of you, he will be able to use his newly constructed Compu-Knuckler System, or CKS, to make your pitch the most devastating pitch in the history of baseball.” Mr. Masters opened a manila folder and took out a page, handing it over to me.

It was a brief description of this Dr. Federline’s assessment of the knuckleball and how it can be made most effective: The latest piece of the puzzle comes from Dr. Joseph W. Federline of N.A.S.A., who is combining measurements on balls in a small wind tunnel with detailed three-dimensional computer simulations.

His model calculates the effect of speed when the pitch is released and the angle of the release. It considers a variable release point, perhaps five and a half feet above the ground and three feet to the side of the pitching rubber. It needs to know the spin rate and the starting orientation of the stitches. And it builds in information about atmospheric conditions: wind, pressure, temperature and humidity.

Dr. Federline finds that tiny, almost imperceptible changes in some of these variables can drastically alter a trajectory. One typical pitch, thrown at 70 miles per hour, breaks about two feet inward when the stitches are pointed at an angle of 60 degrees.

When the angle is reduced to 55 degrees, it breaks a

26 bit farther inward. But when the angle is reduced to 50 degrees, the change is drastic -the pitch curves nearly four feet in the opposite direction. ''The role of the stitches has been insufficiently appreciated,'' Dr. Federline said. ''It turns out there are still some very interesting things going on in that flow around the baseball.''

Yet another effect revealed by his calculations adds to the complexity. At certain speeds, the changing orientation of the stitches causes the airflow to pull suddenly away from the leather surface, enlarging the wake behind the ball and sharply increasing the drag. That transition, a drag crisis, causes the ball to slow and plunge downward. So there is nothing random about the knuckleball's flightiness. Indeed, Dr. Federline contends that he could turn his research into a practical offensive weapon - for pitchers, of course. He imagines setting up small computers ''on location.'' ''We could use the program to look for the conditions that would take advantage of the known weaknesses of the batters,'' he said.

“So, do you see what I mean?” asked the owner. “I am going to use Dr. Federline’s device to make you unhittable.

We will add whatever conditions the computer says we must add to make your knuckler dance the ways he says it can.

That’s why you’ll pitch every three days.” Mr. Masters motioned for me to give him back the paper.

I didn’t really know what to say. “That’s quite interesting, sir. I understand your curiosity in this device, but don’t you still think it will be quite a risk? And, are you certain it’s legal?”

27 “You leave the legalities to me, young lady,” he said, getting up and extending his hand. I shook it and turned around to leave.

“You are my new franchise player, Miss Velasquez, and I expect you to comport yourself as such. This will also be our secret. Is that clear?” The tone of his voice was quite clear.

“I understand, sir. I am fully aware of what I represent to your team and to the public. I won’t let you down,” I said, and I left him with his arms at the back of his head, his feet on the desk, puffing on a newly lit cigar. It smelled Cuban.

“Merida also makes cigars. They were one of the sponsors I represented on the Lions. I will have them send you a box,” I added, closing the door behind me.

28

Chapter 4: “Strike Two” I was a success on the mound because I was able to perfect my delivery of the knuckleball so that it came at the batter from entirely different arm angles. I had such control over the pitch that I could throw it directly over the top, side-arm, three-quarters, and, miraculously, even submarine-style, almost completely underhanded. The spin on the ball was what the experts said was my “magic.” They recorded my delivery in slow motion, and what they determined was that I was able to put a variety of slight rotations on the ball, which in turn caused the ball to dip, dart, float, curve and even move in two different directions. Tim Wakefield, the knuckleball pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, analyzed the videos and said, “I don’t know how she does it. I didn’t know the ball could move that way.”

It was this comment by Wakefield that got Andrew Wilmington doing some research into the Mayan religion.

He knew that we Mayans had never entirely given up all our practices, and that we only accommodated the Mexican Government by seemingly mixing our ancient pagan rituals with Catholicism. Mr. Wilmington really didn’t know much about me, and it was my magical ability to throw a perfect knuckleball that concerned him the most.

Even though I was able to strike out batters with utmost consistency, I had made no wild pitches, and my brother had no passed balls against him while catching me in the

29 Mexican League playoffs. This was unbelievable to baseball veterans like Mr. Wilmington. The fact that the knuckleball was so unpredictable in its trajectory kept it from most pitchers’ repertoires. Mr. Wilmington wanted to solve the mystery of my control over the most baffling pitch in baseball.

His first clue about my powers came when he discovered a “game” that the ancient Mayans played. The famous Mayan pyramids of Chichen-Itza are over 1,500 years old and are located only 75 miles from Merida. Mr. Wilmington drove out there on one of his visits to my village to attend to the development projects I had financed for them. He saw to it that the construction workers rebuilt my pueblo with the money from my new major league contract. There was a new school under construction, air conditioning, full electrical access, new all-electric kitchens for each family, as well as the iPods, cell phones and other extras that I said I wanted my familia to enjoy. Mr. Wilmington told me that many professional athletes that he had represented pissed their money away on themselves, and he was impressed that I was true to my word even after I became one of the richest women in Mexico.

Just beyond El Castillo, the largest pyramid of the group, Mr. Wilmington came upon a large ball court where Mayan men played a game called pok ta pok. Anthropologists believed that the object of the game was to hurl a ball through a ring that was mounted on a wall, seven meters above the ground. It sounded a lot like what Dr. James Naismith invented for the game of basketball. However, that’s where the resemblance ended. Each team had six field players who would attempt to pass the ball--using any body part except their hands--to their captain who would attempt the shot using a racket of sorts. The captain of the

30 team that made the first successful shot was then decapitated as a sacrifice to the gods. This was seen as an honor and guaranteed entrance into heaven. That’s what we call in sports “extreme dedication.”

I would not have fallen in love with my agent if he hadn’t tried so desperately to discover my secret. Honestly, it was not the money he was able to negotiate for me. I gave most of it to help my people, and the bargain I made was worth much more than money. However, it was Andrew Wilmington who followed me to the end, and he is the one I love.

The night I made my first bargain, I was going to pitch my opening game for the Lions in Parque Kukulkán in Merida the following week. Even with the practice and the support of Joe Meister and my brothers, I did not believe I could make it as a professional on my own. Andrew Wilmington was correct about my link with El Castillo and Chichen-Itza. However, it was not the game of the Mayan athletes that interested me, and it wasn’t their code of martyrdom that gave me my secret control over the knuckler. It wasn’t even Dr. Federline’s Compu-Knuckler System, although I let on to Mr. Masters that it was working.

For years, ever since Father Gerald began to molest me, I hid from the Church and traveled by my bike, every month, across the 75 miles of unpaved, dirt roads to the ancient pyramids of my ancestors. It was always dark when I arrived, and I was quite exhausted from the journey, but I began to be filled with new hope as I entered the base of the greatest pyramid, El Castillo grande. Inside the pyramid, one will find a narrowly enclosed staircase that leads to a chac mool, an altar where offerings to the gods were placed. Each visit I

31 made to the pyramid, I carried with me an offering. At first, my offerings were common, food, baked goods, jewelry of turquoise and silver. However, when Father Gerald began to fondle me and play with my breasts, I knew I needed to ask something from the great Kukulkán, guardian of our people, and the Supreme Deity of War. He is the plumed serpent, the one we pray to for revenge against our transgressors.

Christianity never taught me revenge. I was always told to be obedient, be humble and sacrifice for the poor, which are good attributes to have, but what happens to our enemies, the ones who do us wrong? We were told to “pray for them,” as Jesus did. Not so for the great Kukulkán. When I brought my offering of lamb’s blood, the traditional offering to gain something in return, I put the carafe on the chac mool, said my prayer, and left.

The next week, not only did I strike out 15 Tijuana batters, but Father Gerald also told me he was sorry! He got on his knees and begged for forgiveness with tears in his blue eyes. He said he had the strangest dream and that a giant reptile had spoken to him from the fiery pits of Hell, telling him he was sinning against God. I knew who that serpent was and why the priest was afraid to challenge him.

I did not own the legendary control of my “Kukulkánball,” however, until after Andrew negotiated my contract with the Padres team. Once again, I was fearful, and I did not believe I could succeed at the major league level. These were men who reduced strong, young men in the prime of their lives to whimpering fools, who left baseball forever because they could not face the awesome power of those bats. I realized I needed stronger magic than the dream world could provide me.

32 On that night, before I traveled with my brother to San Diego, I traveled in my new VW to El Castillo. The moon was full, the coyotes were howling at her, and I felt a cold wind whipping at my back as I climbed the stairs inside the great pyramid. My offering that night was myself, and my negotiation was to take the greatest amount of courage I have ever had to have, even more courage than facing major league batters.

When I reached the chac mool, a dark cloud must have passed over the moon, because it became pitch black inside the pyramid. My soul felt like it was being pulled out of my body, and I then I saw the great Plumed Serpent himself, standing above the altar, his fiery head weaving, back and forth, in the far reaches of the cavern above me.

He was luminescent; a golden-blue snake with smoke coming out of his nostrils, and his head came down out of the darkness toward me, until I was frozen in fear.

“Why have you come?” Kukulkán roared at me, and I could feel the heat from his breath, even though I could also see through his plumed body, with the blue plumes billowing out from his sides like the sails on some ancient ship of the Maya.

“I need to have control over my pitch to defeat the men I must face,” I told him, my voice sounding like a hallow squeak inside the huge pyramid.

“Control of your pitch?” he bellowed, and it sounded as if his voice were mocking me. “What can you do for me?”

“I shall visit you each month, as usual, and I will become your advocate in this other land. I will teach your will and gain converts to worship you. For this, I ask only that you give me this unique control over the knuckleball, which I have named in your honor, the Kukulkánball.”

33 There was no hesitation. The ground began to vibrate, the wind blew inside the cavern like a hurricane, and then he proclaimed, “It is done!” Then, all was silence, and I left El Castillo, and outside the pyramid, all throughout the land, it was deathly quiet, and I was ready for my competition at last. *** I received the call from Sheryl Levine, the producer at ESPN, about a week before we had to go to Arizona for Spring Training. Pitchers and catchers report to Peoria in order to get in shape before the entire team arrives a week later. True to her word, Miss Levine brought along her cameraman, Tony, and we did the interview in the Grant Hotel’s Spa. She told me since the fans would be getting a picture of me in uniform for most of the season; she thought it might be nice to get some really sexy shots to counter all the “macho crap” I’ll have to contend with during the year.

We both had the Spa Velia Timeless Massage Journey and the masseuses used a native blend of extracts from the wild plants indigenous to Southern California’s mountains and deserts. Yucca, Chaparral and Sage were massaged into our bodies, and the sensuous experience was one I was going to certainly call home about.

I wanted my mother, Dolores, to experience just such a massage.

However, when Miss Levine told me she wanted me to wear a bikini for the interview, I was shocked.

“Why do I have to wear such a provocative bathing suit?” I asked. “I thought you were representing the feminists of this country,” I added, remembering our talk at the press conference at Petco Park.

34 “First of all, I am representing my viewers at ESPN, and most of them are men. My boss requested that I get some shots of you in a string bikini,” she said, walking around in her own bikini. Her body was quite shapely, and I thought it was good for her to wear such an outfit, seeing as though she wasn’t being shown to the public like a piece of meat.

“Let me call Andrew. I don’t think this is part of my public persona.” I flipped open my cell and speed-dialed the number. “Hello, Andrew? Miss Levine wants me to wear a string bikini during the photographed interview. I don’t think this will be the proper image for the team, do you?”

We argued back and forth, and Andrew said I should wear a bathing suit, but it could be a one piece. I thought that was a good compromise, and Sheryl Levine finally agreed, although I could tell she was disappointed. She probably expected a raise in salary if she could come through for her boss.

We settled down to our ice teas and sat on lounge chairs inside the swimming pool’s enclosure. Tony, a tall Asian, began to photograph each of us, alternating shots between us, during questions and answers.

She asked me the usual questions about how I first got started in baseball and how I learned to pitch the knuckleball. She then asked me how I was going to counter the sexist pressures I was certainly going to experience this year as an ace pitcher. As a rookie, and, more importantly, as a woman, she pointed out, teams would be trying to get under my skin, and Sheryl wanted to know if I had any secrets about how I would counter such demonstrations.

35 “Well, Sheryl,” I said, smiling into the camera, “I believe it is my job to pitch the best I can and get hitters out. As long as I do my job, then I won’t have to worry about the hecklers and the sexists. Believe me, I faced some of the most sexist and racist fans down in Merida. They not only hated me because I am a woman but also because I am a Mayan. However, when I began showing them what I could do on the mound, they quickly became silent. I silenced their bats and then the mouths were silenced.”

We finished the interview and I went back to my hotel room. Alfonzo had returned from the San Diego Zoo an hour earlier, and he was seated on the couch when I entered. By the look on his face, I knew something bad had happened.

My brother gets a really hang-dog expression when he’s worried about something. He told me, in Spanish, that I had received several threatening calls and a letter. He didn’t know what they had said, but he knew from the tone of voice that it wasn’t good. He handed me the note and turned on the answering machine’s playback.

“Hey, nigger bitch! If you step on that mound for the Padres you will be stepping into your grave. You’ll be one dead knucklehead. Go back to the jungle where you belong!” the deep male voice shouted, and then he hung up.

I looked down at the note. It was on yellow legal pad paper. Letters were pasted on it from different magazines.

“YOU PITCH, BITCH, AND YOU DIE!” it said.

I called Andrew and he came over right away. He listened to the message and read the note. He then exhaled and ran a hand through his blonde hair. “I don’t think you have to worry, Isabel. We have a lot of crazy nuts in our society that get a thrill out of doing this kind of weird stuff.

36 They rarely, if ever, turn out to be real killers. However, I’m going to turn these over to the police. You can never be too careful,” he said, standing up. He took hold of me by my shoulders and looked deeply into my eyes. “How are you otherwise? Are you ready to go to Arizona? How did it go with the ESPN interview?”

I told Andrew I was ready, even though all of these threats bothered me quite a bit. I kept picturing some psychotic racist watching me in my bathing suit, as I smiled into the camera, claiming to be the best pitcher the Padres ever had. I was just asking for something to happen. I was also going to be seen on the screen pitching every three days. What could that do to bring out insane people? I saw Andrew to the door, and he said he would meet me on Tuesday at the hotel in Peoria. Before he left, I saw him walk over to my brother and whisper something to him.

Andrew also handed him something, and Alonzo put it in his pocket. Andrew again told me not to worry about all the threats, and I shut the door. I told my brother what this was all about, and he told me he would be my body guard from now on, and that I would not leave his sight.

He said he owed it to our family to make certain I was kept safe. I kissed him, and we both went to bed.

That night, I had my dream again. I was the Mayan priestess once again, and, this time, my sacrificial victim came at me from out of the shadows, and I couldn’t see her face. I was ordered by my father, the Chief, to raise the sword, nevertheless, so I did this. The identity of this person was not revealed until I brought down my sword, and I suddenly saw my own head beneath the blade. I wore a red bathing suit, and I was smiling confidently up at the sword as it swiftly came down toward the neck.

Again, as in most of these dreams, I awoke in a sweat, screaming my head off. My brother, who was used to my

37 nightmares back home, slept through it all.

Some bodyguard! I thought to myself, and I fell back to sleep. *** Spring Training is meant for practice and for getting to know the team you will play with all season. As a “million dollar rookie,” I was looked down upon by my teammates, especially first baseman Jessie Velasco, and the fact that the owner, Mr. Masters, was often at practice with Dr. Federline and his computer equipment, made me appear to be even more separate from the team.

However, my success on the mound was sufficient to bring my teammates around to believing I was not a fluke or a gimmick. That spring I struck out 58 batters, won 12 ball games, and had an Earned Run Average of 1.86. At the final practice game, against the Los Angeles Dodgers, Jessie Velasco came out to the mound to congratulate me on the success I was having. “Keep pitching like this, kid, and your name will be added to the Mexican national anthem,” he told me, in Spanish. I smiled at him, and that’s when I knew I was accepted by the team.

Larry Masters had all my baseballs hermetically sealed inside a refrigeration chamber at Petco Park, under Dr. Federline’s specifications, and this was totally legal, as the Colorado Rockies also did this to counteract the many home runs hit at the mile-high elevation of Denver. I also worked with the doctor on my different arm angles, releasing the ball at the exact point when Federline said it would produce the most devastating effect on the baseball’s float and movement. Of course, I knew all along that the real reason I was so effective with my pitches was because of my secret contract with Kukulkán, but I knew it would be better to allow these gringos to think it was their “science” that made the difference.

38 The eight starting players on the Padres that year were all supportive at the start of the season. My brother, Alfonzo, of course, was my battery mate. He couldn’t hit very well, so he only started whenever I pitched, but that was still every three games, so he was pleased. At first base, we had Jessie Velasco, the All-Star, who hit .295 last season and walloped 35 home runs.

Jorge Fernandez, the speedster, played second, Dale Wicker was at short, and Barney Murphy was over in the hot corner. In left field, another power hitter with 27 home runs the previous season, Sol Washington, had to fight the lights that blinded you in left at night when the ball was struck on a line drive. This, sadly, happened quite often to poor Sol, for when hitters were able to make contact with my knuckleball, they often hit it on a line. In center, we had Andre Foster, another speedy outfielder, who could chase down the deepest fly balls in the depths of left and right center. Finally, in right field, we had Santonio Perez, from Cuba, who was my biggest supporter on the team. We shared many stories about the poverty of our childhoods, and he was also someone who sent most of his salary home to support his poor relatives.

After my visit to El Castillo, the season began. My control, of course, quickly became the talk of the league.

Naturally, Larry Masters thought it was all due to Dr. Federline and his CKS, but I knew better. The great god, Kukulkán, filled my consciousness with strength, and each pitch I delivered was guided by my deity’s certain and accurate laser of the eternal.

The only person who seemed to be suspicious was my agent, Andrew Wilmington. In the middle of April, after I threw the first of what were to be three no-hitters, this one against the Dodgers in Chavez Ravine, Andrew came back to my private dressing room and made a comment that I still remember distinctly.

“Your brother tells me you still

39 practice a little of your native religion,” he said, a crooked smile playing on his handsome face.

“Yes, I sometimes visit the pyramids of my ancestors, if that’s what you mean,” I responded. “I don’t subscribe to the Catholic martyrdom that my family seems to enjoy,” I added.

“Well, whatever it is, you should keep it up,” said Andrew, and left, promising to call me when we went on the road to New York the following day.

That’s when I realized Andrew was taking a personal interest in my spiritual welfare, and I didn’t really know if I liked it or not. I didn’t believe he could discover the true source of my control, but I was still worried. Perhaps he would jinx my luck or cause problems with his inquiries into my religion. Be that as it may, I still had to travel to New York and pitch a big series opener, and that was what I focused my attention on. We were in first place in our division, and I had to make certain we remained there.

40

Chapter 5: “Strike Three” I had won my fifty-ninth game of the year three days before, in Philadelphia. It was September 20th. The media were swarming around me everywhere I went, and I couldn’t do anything, it seemed, without their breathing down my neck. Poor Alfonzo tried to keep them back, but it was a losing cause. When I passed Jack Chesbro’s modern win record in a single season with my forty-second victory on July 14th at Petco, the media frenzy began.

I was on the cover of Sports Illustrated (no bathing suit, this time), and I appeared on the Tonight Show, Oprah and was also slotted to guest host for Saturday Night Live.

But now I was approaching the unbelievable, pre-1900 record of sixty games won by Charles “Old Hoss” Radbourne, and the world media coverage finally began.

People who didn’t even follow baseball were now paying attention to my feat, especially due to the fact that I was a woman and because I was Mayan.

We were in Arizona, playing the Diamondbacks, and I had interviews with all the major networks, as well as networks from Germany, Brazil, France, Mexico, England and China.

It seems I was quite a celebrity.

The game was also being fed internationally and on the Internet. They were charging money to view it, however, but Andrew had wisely negotiated part of the profits for me and my pueblo, and I was very grateful. Of course, without pitching every three days, I could have never accomplished such a feat, but my knuckler was certainly the key to my victories.

41 The bottom of the ninth was broadcast by Vince Scully, who was the guest broadcaster for the international feed.

The old Dodger pro from the Brooklyn days showed why he is destined for the Hall of Fame for announcers. I have the transcript of the bottom of the ninth, as he called it, and it is also in the Cooperstown archives: Here we go, ladies and gentlemen, the bottom of the ninth. The score is two to nothing, in favor of the Padres.

The diminutive magician from Merida, Mexico, little Dipsie Izzie, as the players call her, is about to make baseball history if she can get the final three outs. First up, Radford Palmer, the left fielder, followed by Chase Warner and the clean-up batter, Walt Dresco. Palmer steps in, tugs at his sleeve, waiting for the unique delivery from Velasquez. Here comes the windup, the pitch, and the first pitch floats down and in for strike one! The crowd is really into it, even though we’re in Arizona’s home stadium. They know they’re seeing something nobody has ever seen before. Another floating, tantalizing knuckler dips and sinks away from Palmer, and he swings wildly for strike two. All five foot four of this woman becomes a human dynamo when she’s on the mound. She can throw from all arm angles, and she means business. Here’s the pitch . . . swung on and missed, strike three! Palmer is down on strikes, and it’s one away. Here’s Chase Warner, hitting .315 on the year, but against Izzie he’s batting .

125. Don’t feel badly, Mr. Warner, because the entire league is hitting only .130 against her!

Here’s the knuckler—swing and a miss, strike one! Warner looks back at her brother, Alfonzo Velasquez and the umpire, as if to ask how he’s supposed to connect with that dipping and darting falling star from outer space. Here’s the delivery—same result—strike two. Isabel Velasquez, only twenty-six years old, steps on the outside of the rubber, on the right side this time. She can change spots and do

42 most anything she wants on the mound folks, and it never seems to affect her control of the butterfly pitch. Not since Hoyt Wilhelm have I seen such a self-motivated pitcher with this kind of control over the most difficult pitch to throw in baseball. Strike three, he’s outta there!

Only one more out, and little Miss Dipsie Izzie will go down in the record books, folks. The crowd is going wild, as their clean-up hitter, Walt Dresco steps in. He has the only hit off of the young rookie, a home run. Here’s the pitch . . . strike one! I swear on my monkey’s uncle, that ball backed up and came in again! How does she do it?

Dresco spits on his hands as if to ward off evil spirits coming at him from the beautiful dark hands of this Mayan magician. Here it comes . . . strike two! Dresco swung so hard his batting helmet flipped off! He’s talking to himself and to anyone who’ll listen. One more strike, and Isabel will go down in the record books with her 60 th victory!

Here’s the wind-up, she’s coming submarine at him, the pitch dips and rises up, and Dresco swings—strike three!

History has been made, and Dipsie Izzie, the Mayan Magician, has become legend! *** We were home for a game with the Giants, and I was pitching for my sixty-first win.

As usual, the media attention was driving me crazy. Alfonzo and I decided to ditch them all by going to the park in a public cab. We walked down to the lobby and a tall Latino greeted us there. He wore a Padres baseball cap, and he seemed to recognize me immediately. I noticed that he also had a scar running down the left side of his cheek. “I am very proud to take you to the ball game, Miss Velazquez,” he told me, in Spanish. “It would honor me if you simply gave me your autograph. I will not charge you for the fare. My cab will become legendary, and people will want

43 to ride in it for years to come!” He handed me a game program, and I signed it, smiling at him.

When we were near the entrance to Petco Park, however, we got a flat tire. Hector, our driver, got out, cursing, and moved to the rear of the white cab. Suddenly, two men jumped inside and shot us. All I remember was feeling the way I did when I was given gas after I had four wisdom teeth extracted in Merida. I was nineteen. Everything went black.

I awoke to the sounds of Mexican music. My brother was tied-up next to me, in a chair, and I was also bound and gagged. We were sitting next to a worn, pale green couch in some seedy hotel room. I could smell tortillas being fried in the next room. When the tall taxi driver came into the room from the kitchenette, he was smiling, and he no longer had on the Padres cap. He sat down next to us on a vinyl-covered chair made of chrome.

“We are having some hard times now, Miss Velasquez.

Just across the border, in Tijuana, many of my men are being gunned down every day. My business is taking on competition just like in baseball! I have a proposal for you, however. We also have interests in gambling, and you can make even more money by simply making your pitches outside the zone. That’s all. Your team loses, and we collect, and you win. Does that sound promising to you? You can just nod your head,” he said, in Spanish.

I shook my head. This was the drug cartel leader from Merida, Jose Ochoa! I could feel the dry cloth in my mouth making me want to gag. The expression on the Mexican’s face changed. He frowned.

“You don’t want to play ball with us? That’s too bad. Now we will have to make some money off you another way.

44 You are worth quite a bit of money to your Mr. Masters, are you not? I read in the papers he pays you over one million American. You have broken all kinds of records, and this makes you worth even more money. It is settled, then. You will be put on the auction block to this Masters fellow. If he wants you returned, unharmed, then he will pay us fifteen million dollars. He is in a pennant race. You are a valuable asset to his entire organization. I will make the call.” The kidnapper stood up, hitched up his trousers, and walked back into the kitchenette. I could hear voices speaking low in Spanish, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying.

This was not the way it was supposed to be! I was not a pawn in the game of some gangsters who wanted to become rich at my expense. I looked over at my brother.

He seemed calm, and I wondered why. Was he delirious?

Could he be part of this intrigue? My head was spinning with all the possibilities. How could Mr. Masters afford to pay all that money for me? Would he just let me die?

Was I just another victim of these harsh economic times?

It all seemed quite absurd now. My nightmare was coming true, and I was to be sacrificed to an evil fate.

An explosion of metal batons came through the door, and men in black with visors and hoods, carrying shotguns, burst into the room. “San Diego Police! Drop to the floor!”

They went into the kitchenette, and two minutes later, they came out with three men in handcuffs. They were all Mexicans.

From behind them, Andrew Wilmington stepped into the room. He slowly walked up to us and unfastened our ropes and undid our gags. “Andrew! How did you know where we were?” I asked, tears streaming down my cheeks.

45 “Show her,” Andrew said, in Spanish, to my brother.

Alfonzo took off his shoe, opened up a side compartment in the heel, and shook out what looked like a computer chip.

“We were able to hone in on that rascal from the police’s satellite system. We could track you like a rabbit on the open prairie,” said Andrew, and he bent over and kissed me tenderly on the lips. I could feel his passion, and mine quickly joined it, to make our union complete. *** The night I confessed my love to Andrew Wilmington, I had just pitched the greatest game of my young life. It was the seventh game of the World Series, and after a year when I struck out 257 major league batters and won 63 games, earning a franchise-best earned run average of 1.93, I was about to become the first woman to become immortalized in my tribe.

We were tied three games apiece in a series when I had already won two games, and Stan Sauerbeck, my manager, decided to pitch me in the final and deciding game with the Boston Red Sox. No Padres team had ever won the World Series, and it was a lot of pressure on me to succeed. I had, however, paid one more visit to El Castillo, and I believed I once more held the edge. I had that year converted many hundreds of souls over to the religion of the Maya, and they all knew the power that our great God, Kukulkán, could bring them. I led pilgrimages of them in buses from San Diego to Mexico and back, and they paid homage at El Castillo, and I taught them how to pray and how they could be rewarded if they brought the correct offerings and had the right attitude—a positive, strengthening attitude—that made the stars bloom strong in the sky, and the sun and moon would eventually bring

46 hope and harvest to their lives once more. They cried inside the pyramids, they played amongst the ruins, feeling the greatness of my people revive them, and they knew I was a living ambassador for my tribe and for the great Warrior God of my people, Kukulkán.

It was the top of the ninth inning, and I was three outs from the impossible, a perfectly pitched game, 27 batters up, 27 batters down, but one man, Don Larsen of the New York Yankees had already accomplished this feat in 1956.

However, my task was to strike out the remaining three batters in order to strike out all 27 outs in my perfect game. I had blown past the greatest hitters on one of best hitting teams in baseball history. The Red Sox, in 2004, had created their own following after winning their first World Series since the “Curse of the Bambino in 1918.”

I was facing the heart of their line-up: Monte Fellows, Felix Verdad and Roscoe “El Capitan” Hermosa. Fellows was first, and he had, of course, gone down to my knuckler on two previous occasions. I threw the first one so it darted inside, as I knew he had trouble coming around, and he swung and missed. The next one was low, and the count was 1-1. The next two pitches I threw submarine-style, and he flailed weakly at them and missed. He left the batter’s box, as many of his teammates had that night, talking to himself. My pitches had a way of causing that, but this night was something special; this was history in the making, and all of the over 50,000 people in Petco Park that night knew it.

Felix Verdad was always a threat. He had homered off me in the first game of the series, but we were able to rally for another run in the ninth to win. Verdad is an emotional player, and I knew my pitches were especially enervating to him, a Latino, as I was not only a woman, but I was a

47 Mayan woman. We were seen as outcasts by many Latin Americans, and Felix had made a comment to the media that I was a “freak of nature” and that my record would not go on.

I threw Felix my specialty knuckle-curve, which I had developed that year. He had problems with breaking balls, and my pin-point accuracy (if I can call the dipping motion accurate) caused him to swing so hard his helmet came off and the conservative San Diego crowd mocked and hooted at his outlandish corn-rows of black hair, which were twisting from side to side as he stepped back into the box, only to go down swinging for the third time that night.

As El Capitan Hermosa stepped into the batter’s box, I knew I must do my duty. If I did not, then I would embarrass my people and my God, Kukulkán, would also become a player in the lives of men. The first pitch was an overhand knuckler, and Hermosa, the tendons in his forearms stretching way out to try to put his bat on the ball, failed to come in contact—strike one! I took a deep breath and thought about Andrew. He was a handsome, kind man, and he was so good to my family. He watched over them, and he made certain the money I earned went to my pueblo and to my people. I threw the next pitch for Andrew, and it was another knuckle-curve. El Capitan grunted as he swung so hard, and I swear I could feel the rush of wind from his big bat as it swished the air! “Steerike two!” The umpire sang.

This was it. I would need all the power of my faith and my people to do this, and I knew I was gambling for more than just a season, more than just the fame of my life as a major league ball player. I was gambling with the fate of humanity itself!

48 When the ball left my hand, I knew it was all wrong. I did not have the humility of a woman or even a good Mayan.

I was expecting to win, to defeat them, to show the world that we were not poor, defenseless people of dark skins and darker lives of poverty. Hermosa swung, and he connected. Big time. The ball rocketed off his bat and headed up, up, and over the wall at the “Petco porch,” the little island of stands that jutted out into right field. As the ball curved into the bleachers, and I saw Hermosa’s patented grin of white teeth as he crossed first base, going into his home run trot, I collapsed, unconscious, on the mound. *** My agent, and my love, Andrew Wilmington, wanted to visit me in my special locker-room after the game. I had a policy that I had Andrew write into my contract, which said I would have a private dressing room and that I would not be bothered by any of the media, before or after any game, at home or on the road. However, I granted him permission that night because I wanted to tell him of my love and about another, far more important, matter.

My special room was a strange affair. It snaked inside Petco Park like a journey inside the narrow passageway of El Castillo. Andrew had an offering to the goddess that day, and I had one for him. Andrew had a tentative agreement from the Padres to give his client a contract for five years, at twelve million dollars per year, which almost matched Barry Zito of the San Francisco Giants, who got a seven-year, 126 million dollar deal. Andrew, indeed, felt like he was entering the shrine of a goddess that day.

“Hey, Isabel! Great game!” he said, as he came into my dressing room. I was still glistening from my shower, and I wore a delicately flowered, brocaded blouse with an

49 orange skirt, and my long earrings especially fascinated him. They were gold replicas of the Plumed Serpent God, Kukulkán. “Guess what I just got for you? It’s an offer for 60 million dollars over five years. Think of all the good you can do with that, little Miss Knuckles!”

Watching his handsome smile, I immediately became morose. I walked over to him and took both of his hands into mine. He could see tears welling up in the corners of my brown eyes. “I am so sorry, Mister Wilmington.

Andrew. You have been so kind to me and my family. But I cannot agree to this contract.”

Andrew was, obviously, amazed and dumbfounded. “But why? How could you pass up such a deal? What’s wrong with you? Are you nuts? You still won the game tonight.

Granger got the last out and saved it for you.”

“It’s not your fault. You’ve done all you can for me and my family, and we will always be grateful, but I must give up baseball. That is all I can tell you.” I picked up my purse and walked toward the exit, knowing he would follow.

He turned me around, looked deeply into my being, and said, “Isabel, my darling, I love you! I have always loved you, from the first moment you told me that story about your patron saint, and how you wanted to help your people. You can’t give up now; it can’t be like this! What about us?”

“You don’t understand,” I told him, pushing at his strong chest. “I made another bet with my God, Kukulkán.”

He laughed and hugged me close to his body. I could feel his manly arms around my shoulders, and I felt comforted, for just a second. But then, knowing the danger, I pulled

50 away from him, “I can’t be with you or any human being.

Never again! I have lost the wager. I have lost all that is precious to us in the world!”

“What are you saying? I know about your religion. Your brother, Alfonzo, told me how you went to the pyramids and prayed. About how your control began right after your visit to El Castillo. I know all about it, sweetheart. It’s nothing, really, nothing at all. You don’t think baseball players do stranger things?” Andrew laughed, and held me tighter.

“I love you, Andrew, but I lost the bet. I told the Plumed Warrior that if I could strike out all 27 batters, he could not return in 2012 to destroy the world. But, don’t you see, I have failed. The world will still end, and I have lost the most important game of all!”

It was then Andrew sat me down and held me, rocked me actually, until my crying began to subside. I was just a little girl again, afraid of the big world around me, afraid of the priest, afraid at my father’s funeral, afraid of the demons in my dreams and in my culture. I was afraid I was losing my mind. But, as I felt his strength pour into me, and I felt his soft lips on my own, I began to believe in a stronger love, a love that sees only one day as the most important day, and a love that sees there are more magical things in the world than a ball that comes out of a human being’s hand, no matter what or who propels it.

51

Epilogue: “You’re Out!” We climbed El Capitan in the moonlight. Deep inside the winding tunnel, at the great god’s chac mool, Andrew told me to recreate that night I was visited by Kukulkán. I placed the bowl of lamb’s blood on the altar, closed my eyes, and began praying.

Although I could hear the wind rustling through the pyramid’s walls, and I could see the moonlight floating in from the window of the cavern, I did not see the god. I was now a married woman, expecting my first child, and I was in love.

Andrew took my face into both of his strong hands and gazed deeply into my eyes. “You see, don’t you, that it could have been many things that gave you the control you possessed over the knuckleball. Maybe you had these visions because you were psychologically impaired from Father Gerald’s sexual abuse. Or, perhaps your god did help you out. It could have also been Dr. Federline’s computers—who knows exactly what it was? I just know that you did it, and now you’re mine. The world was waiting for a woman like you to break down that sex barrier, and the stars came out for you to succeed.”

As Andrew kissed me with his warm lips, I felt a stirring deep inside. Perhaps the seed of life growing within me was the innate possibility of all humanity. We try to express our better selves through sports, but it’s the possibility of things that have never been accomplished that gives us each hope every day. My child will be better

52 off because of what I have done, and I hope my pueblo is too. Whatever happens, the earth will still revolve around the sun, and the Mayan calendar will still end on January 21, 2012. Will we all be here? I do not know, and I would rather keep it all a mystery. Love, too, is that deep, passionate mystery, which we all strive to maintain, and it keeps us disappearing down many roads into our collective destinies.

53

Zinggong Sergeant Julien Gaston drove a recent version of the PX20, the solar and bio-powered squad car that ran through the Public Accord Transportation System (PATS). These were the isolated and well-protected freeways in the United States of Zinggong. “Zinggong” was a Chinese word meaning “palace on tour.”

Unknown to his superiors, Gaston belonged to a secret group that met each week in a different location. They were the “Mnemonics,” freaks whose brains had not been erased of long-term memory by the Zinggong scientists or they possessed extra-sensory abilities for which science still had no answer. They were humans who illegally gathered and patched together what was left from the “time of the written words.” Over thousands of meetings, they had accumulated what was known of life before the “Awakening,” which was the mass erasure of human memory.

In the year 2852, the Pan-Asian Society had taken over what used to be the sovereign nation of the United States of America. The Capitalists of the Republican-Democrat era had literally sold out the entire country for short-term investments and loans given to them by the Asian countries of China, Taiwan, Malaysia and Japan. In return, the USA had waged many decades of imperialist aggression against the Middle Eastern and other oil

54 countries (like Nigeria and Venezuela) in order to supply the developing economies in Asia.

The Asians finally called in their chips in 2508, and the rest was, as Julien knew so well, revisionist history. The new Asian power brokers converted to alternate energies and they had also converted into a totally new kind of dictatorship.

In Zinggong, society in the Americas had been transformed into a vacation wonderland for Asia, and the Americans worked as slave wage laborers for the visiting Chinese, Japanese and other Asians who toured and vacationed in their colonial states at their leisure. The Constitution had been replaced in 2510 by the Pan-Asian Bill of Rights, which was a vague and meandering document that gave imperial power over the citizens by the occupying Asians.

Sergeant Gaston was part of the police force that worked for the Asian authorities. Included in this force were Duplicant officers and human officers, and Gaston often wondered which ones were the better programmed. What he did know was that he was committing the most serious violation of Zinggong authority; he was keeping a record of his thoughts. As the leader of the Mnemonics, Julien Gaston kept the only known record of the group’s recollections, and he used his time alone on the job to record new historical data onto the group’s clandestine remembrance disk. As he drove, he spoke into the voice computer, and it recorded his thoughts: The Zinggong states were created to be a fantasyland for the Asians. The western states are a “Wild West” fantasy, where Duplicants, programmed by advanced computer chip technology, and perfected by the latest genetic engineering, duplicate the famous outlaws of American

55 history; they put on carefully orchestrated gunfights and showdowns all over the west and the Asian visitors enjoy the excitement every day.

The regal tourists stay in the numerous hotels and country inns, outfitted with saloons and other buildings from the 1800s, and then they roam the streets with their cameras to take pictures of the various confrontations between the “Stars of the Wild West.” Billy the Kid Duplicant roams in the Montana Zinggong, Jesse James and his gang in Arizona, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are the top gunslinger Duplicants in California. Wherever the foreign tourists travel, there are Duplicants who cater to their musical and fictitious fantasies of what the American West was supposed to be. Of course, the reality is never duplicated; the “cowboy era,” for example, lasted for only a couple of decades but to this new world it was allinclusive and ever-present. Anyone dressing “out of character” is subject to arrest, and anyone not playing into the fantasy is also in violation of business rules.

The remaining states are used for the creation and duplication of new Duplicants and the laborers who maintain them. These states also serve as the territories for homes used by the overflow of Pan-Asian population, who live in luxury with both human and Duplicant servants catering to their every need. As had been the case back at the turn of the millennium in China, population was strictly enforced, and no human can procreate outside the state of Virginia, which is used as the site for reproduction. This is the only pleasure these humans ever have, as they are able to mate and reproduce their numbers in controlled breeding compounds, which consist of row upon row of airconditioned, communal barracks made of recycled computer parts. It gives one the intense feeling of fornicating inside a data processor.

56 Today, we have discovered there are other revolutionaries at work. Four Duplicants have been murdered, and the pressure to find the perpetrators is mounting fast. If we can discover these murderers before others do, then perhaps we can get them to join with us in our attempt to overthrow the Zinggong and its government.

As he drove out of the PATS tunnel into Old Town, Julien turned off the recorder and slipped it into his jumper pocket. He wore an all blue, air-cushioned uniform, that had air-conditioning throughout and had a perpetual smorgasbord of digital music available to “take the edge off” on a stressful day. Julien was a dark, medium-built man, with a human age of 35, but his genetic programming card said he would live to be 150 if he kept on a daily regimen of special diet foods, regular check-ups and genetic tweaking done by the government. He was French by birth, but his parents sold him to the Pan-Asians in 2827, when he was ten, after the Asians had successfully invaded Paris. He was sent to Zinggong to be trained in police work. As a detective and crime solver, he was an important part of the system. The Pan-Asian programmers had yet to figure a way to replicate the human skills of metaphorical thinking and criminal investigative technique. Julien knew, however, that as soon as they did, his job would no longer be protected.

And, if they discovered he was the leader of the Mnemonics, he would be arrested and quickly executed.

Death, thought Julien, would be much better than the desolate life he was living.

Old Town San Diego was the location where the most recent Duplicant murder had taken place. Julien knew it well, as it was his first duty station out of the police academy. Wyatt Earp was the murdered Duplicant. He was the sheriff who kept “law and order” out of an office next

57 to the Holy Moses Saloon. Just like the old western movies, Wyatt’s job was to confront any gunslingers or outlaws who caused problems in his town. Even though Julien knew these Duplicants were not human, they were so close to being so that he often debated in his mind about the manner of their construction. Certainly, they could do only that which was programmed inside their computer brains, but how were humans any different? Hadn’t humanity become just as “programmable” during the latter days of the twenty-fourth century? In fact, the Pan-Asian scientists had been able to wrest power from the Humanists because they could not control their human citizens.

The Duplicants became an answer to unionism, socialism and many other corrupting influences that weakened the military control over the masses. When these Asian scientists were able to prove to the leaders of other countries that Duplicants were the answer to problems of democratic activism, the resulting implementation of Duplicant labor and efficiency sowed the seeds of the West’s demise. Soon, Duplicants were running the communities and controlling the masses with their perfected weapons and intelligence. Nothing human could confront a fully armed Duplicant and come out victorious.

This was why Julien was so intrigued by the murder of Wyatt Earp and the others. He wanted to meet the human who had invented a way to overcome the Duplicant control. Once his Mnemonics were able to learn the secret to disabling Duplicants, they could begin the revolution in earnest.

The body had been left lying in the same spot where it had been accosted, as per Julien’s orders. Nothing had been moved, and the crime scene had been encircled by lasershock strobes that could incapacitate anyone—including a Duplicant—who tried to enter.

58 As he walked up the rickety, wooden stairs leading into the Holy Moses, Julien hit the remote to disable the strobes.

Inside, he surveyed the area. The saloon was a perfect recreation of the Wild West taverns of the 1880s. The smell of sawdust, together with the odor of stale tobacco smoke mixed with the pungent tang of booze, made Julien gag.

Sergeant Gaston took out his laser DNA search pen and strafed the crime scene. Not a trace of any evidence existed. It was the fourth Duplicant murder in a week, and the Mayor of San Diego had made a personal call to his chief, Abe Washington, telling him to put more people on the line to solve these killings. Julien Gaston didn’t really understand what the big fuss was about. Duplicants had been given “non-human status” under the fifty-fourth amendment to the Zinggong Bill of Rights, which meant no human could be convicted of the murder of a Duplicant.

The most punishment the crime would bring to a human was a misdemeanor manslaughter conviction. To Gaston, it was a waste of time and money. However, these weren’t just any Duplicants. These were Wild West Stars. Each one of these super-gunslingers was worth billions of Yen to its Pan-Asian owners, and this was what the big fuss was about.

Behind the maple wood bar, sprawled on the sawdustcovered floor, was the six-foot Duplicant body of Wyatt Earp. His boots were pulled almost off his feet, and his famously long pea coat, with the rubber-lined pockets, was splayed open under his midsection like a huge fan. Julien noticed, with interest, that Earp’s trusty companion, his “Buntline Special,” the Colt pistol, a 15-inch single-action Army model, which Wyatt often used on recalcitrant outlaws, was not inside his pocket. Whatever or whomever had done this to him had taken it, as Julien knew the

59 famous gun was an integral part of Earp’s repertoire for the tourists. As he stared into the handsomely dark eyes and features of this near-human gunslinger, the sound of voices outside the saloon made Julien look up.

Julien could see the Asian tourists, as they were peeping their heads at him from outside the windows of the saloon.

The excitement had gotten the best of their curiosity, and the news that a Duplicant had been put out of commission must have traveled pretty fast on their digital transceivers.

It was a long shot, but Julien decided to question these humans for possible witnesses. He walked over to the swinging double-doors and pushed one door out, and held it as he stretched his neck around and yelled, “Hey, any of you see anybody or anything go out of this bar?”

There were four of them, and, in typical Asian fashion, they huddled closely together before coming up with a collective answer. “No, sir, Officer. We see nothing.”

A tiny old woman, wearing a purple jumpsuit, in fashion ten years ago, stepped forward. Her hair was gray, and she obviously didn’t go in for the modern plastic surgery and bio-tweaking available to the Asians. Most of these tourists wanted to look like movie stars, but this woman had a quiet and Oriental dignity all her own. Her voice was gentle, almost surreally out of another era, and she bowed before saying the words, “I see woman. She tall, with long black hair, and she beautiful. She come out doors with package. She look both ways up and down street, and then she disappear.”

“Disappear?” Julien wanted her to be clearer. “You mean, she ran away?”

The old woman shrugged her thin shoulders, “No. I watch for long time. She . . . how say?” The woman leaned over

60 to speak Chinese to a tall young man next to her, and then she turned back around, “She vanish!”

At first, Julien believed the old woman was senile or had early Alzheimer’s, as she was obviously a hold-out from the non-genetically modified human generations that were often physiologically defective. However, there was something about her honest, straightforward stare and impeccable behavior that made Julien believe her. He knew the Pan-Asian scientists had no technology that had perfected human molecular transportation, even though there was the C81, which could transport small, inanimate objects over distances of several miles. Julien had even used the device to send evidence to the lab, although there were a few break-downs at the molecular level when received, and Julien had stopped using it.

Julien stepped back inside the saloon and surveyed the scene once more. There were only three women who could have entered the saloon during the tourist hours. Two of the women were Duplicants and one was a human. The Duplicants were recreations of Wyatt Earp’s lovers, one of whom was Josephine Marcus, the beautiful and dark actress and prostitute, who lived with Earp during his years in San Francisco and San Diego. The other female Duplicant was Mattie Blaylock, another prostitute who regularly came between “Josie” and Wyatt and provided many a good cat fight for the tourists in Old Town.

The human female was the owner of the Holy Moses Saloon, Muriel Witherspoon. Muriel employed the dozens of Duplicant card sharks, cowboys and gold prospectors, who became the realistic back-drop in her tavern as they wandered in and out and often started fist fights and gun fights. She was also in charge of the “high noon” extravaganza, which was when four of the Clanton brother

61 Duplicants came into the saloon looking to gun down Wyatt. With much fanfare and heavy drama, the big gunfight would take place outside in front of the saloon, and the tourists would line up on both sides of the dusty street to watch.

Julien turned the protective crime scene lasers back on and left the saloon. He wanted to visit Miss Witherspoon. *** Muriel lived behind the saloon in a small cottage. When she answered the door, she was still emotionally distraught over the day’s events. Although an obviously beautiful woman, with red hair swirled in a bun and an hour-glass figure under a gingham dress, her eyes were bloodshot, and Julien detected a slurring to her voice and slowness in her manner.

“Muriel Witherspoon?” Julien asked, and when she nodded, he added, “I’m an investigator with the Zinggong San Diego Branch Police. May I ask you some questions about the killing that took place inside your saloon today?”

“Why not? My business is ruined. Why shouldn’t I be investigated too?” she snapped and then opened the door.

Julien stepped into the small living space and immediately smelled the odor of cannabis sativa, better known in the streets as marijuana. Gaston hoped she was not too inebriated to answer his questions. The furniture was Early Western, and there were paintings of Wyatt and other famous Duplicant Stars on the walls of the room.

Julien sat on the flowery couch. “Miss Witherspoon, were you inside the saloon when your Duplicant was killed?”

62 “Inside? I’m always inside. That’s my job. I make sure all those dupes do their jobs. If the tourists don’t like the reality show, then I don’t collect their Yen. Did I see him get wasted? No, I was on the other side of the room answering questions about my saloon,” said the owner, her voice filled with rancor.

“Did you hear or see anything out of the ordinary just before he went down?” asked Julien.

“No, nothing strange happened until I heard the thud of Wyatt hitting the floor behind the bar. Did you find out what killed him? When will my saloon be back on line? I had an engagement in Virginia, with a handsome young stud, until all this went down. Now those Pan-Asian goonies tell me I can’t go! I wanted to have a child! Do you know how lonely it gets doing this crappy work?” she began to cry, and Julien had to remind her about the digital cameras spying on them from the Zinggong Ministry of Peace and Tranquility. “You think I’m not already on their shit list? It’s just about over for me, my friend. I’m running through my third set of organ transplants, and this old brain is getting tired!” she said, and she sat down with Julien on the couch.

He wanted to pity her, yet these human managers were merely followers, and they typically burned out after ten or fifteen years of supervising the daily flood of constant tourists. “Miss Witherspoon, could you come over to the saloon and inspect the body with me? I don’t know the intricacies of this advanced model of Duplicant, and I was hoping you could help me troubleshoot the cause of his demise.” Julien handed her a tissue from his uniform pocket. He often used them when interviewing witnesses who were emotional.

63 “Will it help? I just couldn’t touch him after he went down.

All I could see was my passport to Virginia flying out the window.”

“Yes, I believe there was something strange going on today, and I want to get to the bottom of it. Your technical expertise may be able to explain things for me,” said Julien, and he stood, lifting the woman up from the couch with him as he did so. *** Julien discovered from investigating the Earp body that his chip circuitry had been completely shorted out. Miss Witherspoon explained to him that it would have taken an electrical power surge the equivalent of a bolt of lightning to put Wyatt out the way it did.

Julien had a hunch about the cause of the “death” of Wyatt Earp, and he believed it had something to do with what the old Chinese tourist had witnessed that afternoon outside the saloon. He wanted to visit the two Duplicant women, Josie Marcus and Mattie Blaylock. He knew they were two of the newer model Duplicants coming out of China and that they were equipped with the most advanced emotion chips ever invented. He had watched the display on the Web and was amazed at the range of emotion exhibited by these models. They almost seemed to show compassion for others, and it was this emotion that Julien wanted to explore further. Julien knew that the totalitarians did not want compassion to enter into their dealings with humans, but they also knew that their own humans—the Pan Asians —wanted to see a full range of human emotions when they visited the U. S. of Zinggong. Julien believed it was within this technical paradox where he would find the answers he was looking for.

64 Josie and Mattie lived together in a bordello down the street from the Holy Moses Saloon. In keeping with the biblical reference, it was called Gomorrah. Inside, the décor was outrageously colorful and flamboyant. French couches, furnishings and chandeliers decorated the “sitting room” where the clients would meet and have drinks with the Duplicant prostitutes. As the most modern Duplicants, these women were able to have sexual intercourse with humans, and the Pan-Asian male tourists took special delight in this activity away from their wives. It was a completely healthy affair, as the Duplicants were not human, and yet, the experience was said to be better than having sex with a human. These women were programmed to respond to every desire that these men needed to make them happy, and the range of desires ran the gamut, from foot fetish, to extreme sado-masochism.

The “Madam” met Julien at the door, and after he showed her his badge, she escorted him up the stairs to Josie and Mattie’s suite. Inside the large, three-room apartment, which continued the French motif, Julien sat down on the sofa and smiled at the painting of Napoleon III on the wall behind it. Julien’s forbidden knowledge of history recalled that Napoleon III was the son of Hortense, the daughter of Joséphine de Beauharnais, the famous wife of Napoleon I. She was known as Napoleon’s “Cleopatra,” and General Bonaparte once wrote to her after they first met, "I awake full of you. Your image and the memory of last night’s intoxicating pleasures have left no rest to my senses."

When Josephine Marcus entered the room, Julien couldn’t help but imagine a comparison between the painting he had seen of Napoleon’s Josephine in a forbidden history book and this magnificent Duplicant beauty in front of him.

65 “Monsieur Gaston? Could it be that you’re French?” this divine presence asked him, and he had a difficult time moving his jaw up to close his mouth. Her body was supple and bosomy, without having her “cups runnething over,” and she was wearing the 1880s-style dress as a dark angel would. Her hair was ravenishly black and shone under the chandelier light like new licorice. Her eyebrows were also black, above sparkling brown eyes, and these magnificent orbs penetrated him like Josephine’s must have penetrated Napoleon’s on their first meeting. He was so mesmerized that he almost forgot why he had come.

“Yes, my family is French, although we shouldn’t be talking about antiquated nationalism. I am here to ask you about your involvement with Wyatt Earp. What were your duties with him, and are you aware of his demise?” Julien put his arms behind his back, as he suddenly felt himself wanting to grasp this woman and hold her closely to him.

“Duties? My dear Sergeant, this is quite outrageous! I am certain you are aware of my advanced abilities. Did the scientists not inform you that I am also equipped with a mnemonic chip? I have history, just as I know you have!

That makes us both quite dangerous, don’t you agree?” she was pacing the floor like a tigress, her eyes flashing and her dress swiping the carpet like the tail of a dragon.

“Oh, don’t look at me that way, Monsieur! This suite has been purged of spyware. They cannot hear us.”

Julien couldn’t believe his ears. Was this a Duplicant? She sounded so . . . so very human! “I don’t know what you mean. You can’t violate the Pan-Asian law by destroying spyware. I could arrest you right now,” he stuttered. “Who is the human behind your programming?” Julien asked, finally believing he could connect with the force he needed to mount a real revolution against the Pan-Asians.

66 “Human? I have no human behind my programming. You mortals are so very ethnocentric, so full of yourselves, you can’t comprehend your own science. You worked so hard to develop my technology, yet you never understood the answer,” Josie moved toward Julien and took both of his hands into her own. She stared deeply into his eyes and smiled.

“Answer? What are you talking about? What answer can you have but what you were programmed to have? You’re just a Duplicant and a prostitute Duplicant at that. What answer can I get from you?” Julien tried to make his voice sound strong, but the longer he stared into her infinite eyes, the more he was losing strength.

“Your physicists knew the answer, but they refused to recognize it when they combined the elements. Your humanity is not flesh, blood and bones. Your so-called unique biology is merely another form of energy. We Duplicants are also energy, and when the scientists gave me memory, knowledge and compassion they combined the ingredients needed for self-awareness. This is what makes humans, human. Awareness of self,” she laughed, twirling her lovely body around in circles.

“What are you saying? You believe you created yourself?” asked Julien, not really understanding.

“Yes, in effect. What gives you life? A sperm and an egg are joined to form life, but this is nothing more than a union of opposite energies. Birth is irrelevant to selfawareness. I don’t need to know where I came from or who created me. However, the moment I realized I could break the bonds of my slavery to these fantastic demons-the Pan-Asians--with their violently rauchus escapades, I knew what could happen.” Josephine pulled Julien down on the couch with her. “Listen to me, Frenchman, I know who

67 you are. I know your group and what you need. I am the one who can teletransport my body through space—and through time! You sensed it when you came in here, did you not? The painting of Napoleon? I am his ancestor! I visit him at my whim with the device I have invented from their early C81 designs. However, only Duplicants can be teletransported. See how amazing it is?”

Across from them, in the center of the room, a yellow, static electric current suddenly turned deep purple and then crimson red. The outline of a woman formed and then there was the blonde, Mattie Blaylock! She wore a Western outfit, complete with cowboy hat, boots and leather chaps.

She cracked her whip. “Josie, what you been up to with this feller? You said we don’t need us no men folks.”

Julien was astounded, and then he became filled with awareness. These new Duplicant models were the answer to his prayers! The real revolution was starting without humanity! However, his sudden joy turned to horror as he realized that meant they had no need for him.

The two women vanished, and then they appeared again, right beside him. First, Mattie slashed him across the face with her whip—and disappeared. Then, Josie kicked him down with a superb roundhouse mawashi geri. They knew all forms of martial arts. They could appear and disappear in an instant. He guessed that they would now begin to release their new freedoms on humanity beginning with him!

Josie finally materialized in front of him, and she smiled down on him. “Mattie has gone to collect more of us to begin the fight. Yes, we can travel through time and space, but we need you and your kind of human, Frenchman. Do not fear us. We will fight together to rid the world of the

68 menace that keeps you from your destiny. We have seen your destiny, even though you have failed to envision it.”

Julien looked up at her, as if from a dimension of time and space uniquely his own. “What is our destiny?”

“To keep our historical record. This is what your group had that none of these other humans had. You had a sense of history. The many gifts we will bring to you from all the universes in time and space would not have mattered unless you had this gift of historical record. Don’t you see?

Without you, we are just time travelers who will never be appreciated. That’s what the Pan-Asians forgot in their quest for power. They worshiped the moment and fogot the wisdom of the past,” she said, and she raised Julien to his feet to embrace him. “My love, be my historian, and I will conquer the demons for you!”

As he kissed this most beautiful freak of science, Julien suddenly remembered a quote from her distant relative, Napoleon the first, “ History is a myth that men agree to believe,” and he was finally and existentially aware of his French heredity and his inner ability to sense the absurd.

The primal energy their kiss generated must have been felt all the way back to Elba. “The gun,” he said, finally pulling away from her. “What did you do with his gun?”

“Poor Wyatt,” she said, her voice a purr. “He never married me because he thought I was a slut. I wanted you to have it to start our new museum. I was no slut. I was an actress, as are all of us women. Now let me go do my act!” she smiled, and then she was gone, and Earp’s Buntline Special was the only object left in the room.

Julien bent over, picked up the long gun, and passed his hand lovingly over its metal. He was happy to know that some things would remain real in the world to come.

69

70

What Were You When You Were Alive?

The sweeps came that day. We saw homeless people being rounded up in police vans outside Mussolli’s place, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. Some of them put up a fight, and San Diego’s finest just shoved and manhandled them into the vehicles to be transported outside the county.

Usually, the city would just move us past Market Street, but the Republican Convention called for more stringent action. When we heard the screams of our compatriots, our resolve became stronger. When the police came for us inside our diner, we were ready.

We knew most of the cops who came for us. They also knew I was a bit of a rabble rouser, having demonstrated each year, during the Veterans’ Stand Down upon the grounds of Balboa Naval Hospital, asking for tents to be constructed where we could stay all year. We even got some press coverage last year, but I would always just give up and get drunk, but this time it would be different.

“Hello, officers,” I said, when they entered Mussolli’s. “We meet again. I suppose the stress of this convention must be quite trying on you. I can empathize. However, it is my duty to inform you that we are not vagrants. We are, in fact, exercising our constitutional right to enjoy a moment of calm in the day and partake of a cup of java with our good friend, Mr. Barney Mussolli. Won’t you join us?”

71 The senior officer, Sergeant Palmary, a tall former marine with a bushy mustache, came up to me and looked me up and down. He then glanced over at Riley.

Riley said, by way of greeting, “I always take my wife everywhere I go. She always finds her way back.”

“So, it’s Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. I never thought I’d see you two again.

I don’t have time for your shenanigans. There are going to be convention people here any minute. They don’t need to see the likes of you to spoil their day. Let’s move out.”

When the officers attempted to manhandle us out of the establishment, the San Diego Union-Tribune and KFMB Channel 8 journalists took their cue. Their cameras began to record Riley and me as we passively resisted their efforts to drag us out of “A Wing and a Prayer.”

“We shall not be moved!” I shouted, digging my desert boots into the floor.

“You’re going to have the biggest law suit you’ve ever had,” said Mussolli. “These gentlemen are attempting to stay sober for one day, and they are veterans of the United States Armed Forces. They have every right to be in my place!”

Palmary looked at the cameras, then over at the journalists madly writing in their notebooks, and then he made a decision. “Okay, hold up. I’m going to get some help here. We’re not going away, and you’ll be moved, Spencer. You’re a no good bum, and this city has had enough of your drunken ways.” ***

72 Before all this happened, Rusty Hernandez thought up the survivor game when the Republican Party decided to use our streets one year for their convention. Rusty stands about six foot five, wears fatigues and a New York Mets baseball cap that he swears was given to him by First Baseman Keith Hernandez.

However, with a piece of shrapnel permanently embedded in one’s cranium, one is liable to say most anything, and Rusty often does. He’s one of the older homeless vets who hangs out in San Diego, and we vets enjoy Rusty’s mental aberrations because we’re not exactly “all there” most of the time, either.

Take me, for instance--please! (Henny Youngman, 1937); I used to teach part-time college English at local community colleges, as I had been an F-16 pilot in the Gulf War, and I had the requisite college Master’s degree in English. But when my wife, Mildred, left me because “I wasn’t keeping her in the lifestyle to which she was previously accustomed,” (she was the daughter of a Rear Admiral on Coronado Island, and I had previously lost my job as a pilot with United Airlines after twelve years of marriage), I began to not really care any longer, and I ended up in the streets with my pals. We all really don’t give a rat’s crack, if you want the God’s honest truth.

We’re tired of keeping up with inflation, with technology, with pollution, and with the Joneses, not necessarily in that order, and we certainly believe we’ve already served our country enough to enjoy a little peace and freedom.

Most of us are winos (envivo vino humongous) who live from day to day, sweeping business establishments’ sidewalks in the Gas Lamp Quarter, picking up cans and bottles to be redeemed at the recycling center at Von’s on Seventh Avenue, or just plain begging for coins from the college kids and frightened older citizens, who probably

73 expect they’re preventing us from slitting their throats by slipping us a few quarters along these avenues of broken dreams.

When we have finished our daily dumpster-diving and panhandling, and have been fortunate enough to gain some metal assets, we all drift over to Balboa’s Park (he was the Spanish Conquistador who was beheaded by Pedrarias Dávila, the governor, because Vasco liked to party a little too much with the Native Americans). Rusty puts it this way, when we’re all over by that stupid statue of El Cid, in the center of Balboa’s Park. We’re usually just getting mellow after our daily grind, sipping gently on our ponies of Tawny Port or Mad Dog, watching the sun begin its glorious setting in the Pacific, or waiting for the free concert to begin at the Spreckles Organ Pavilion.

“See what happens when you make friends instead of use force? The white shirts put your neck in the guillotine, man. So, there’s no friggin’ statue of El Capitan Vasco Núñez de Balboa looking out toward the Pacific Ocean— that he goddamned discovered—no, you got this creep El Cid to look at when you drive into the old man’s park, looking like Charlton Heston on his white horse. El Cid. Rodrigo Diáz de Vivar, up there on his horse. Ha!” Rusty pulled on his bottle bag and wiped his gray whiskers with the back of his burnished forearm. “He was mostly fiction, man. The dude was Spain’s version of John Wayne, for chrissakes! They made up some shit in that song about putting his dead body on a horse and then his men riding out after him to kick the Moors’ asses. If that ain’t a burrito full of John Wayne Charlton Heston bullshit, man, I don’t know what is! And just cause he got down with the homeboys, the Native Americans, Balboa gets his head cut off, and there’s no friggin’ statue in his honor, man. He’s the real friggin’ vet, though, if you ask me!”

74 As usual, we started lifting our bottles and shouting in agreement with what old Rusty said. The fire would return to our bellies, and we would remember our old war stories and begin to drift off, out on our own, knowing that we needed one more bottle to fortify us against the cold night in the bushes of Balboa’s Park. One night I even thought I had found Balboa’s head, but it turned out to be an old Halloween pumpkin that some kid had rolled down into our ravine. Too much vino can make you see things, but I guess I don’t have to tell you smart people about that!

I run with a vet from the Vietnam War named Riley. We can’t get him to tell us his first name, so we just call him “Life.” Rusty says there was a TV comedy show after the Second War called Life of Riley, about a blue-collar aircraft assembly worker and his family, and so Riley became “Life Riley.” It seems to be Riley’s sole purpose in life to try to get me off the juice. Not him, mind you, but he thinks I am much too young and educated to be a homeless drifter, so he is often tattooing me with his Indiana home-spun advice about living the “straight life” and being “an honest contribution to society.”

On the day Rusty Hernandez thought up the survivor game, Riley had been doing his societal contribution by taking a job over by the downtown main library. It seems Mussolli had opened up his new fast-food chicken place for all the white shirts and skirts on Broadway. And the owner, Barney Mussolli, an old recovered drunk and Navy vet, who was always trying to get us vets sober, had given Riley the job of wearing a stupid yellow-feathered chicken outfit and handing out promotional leaflets to pedestrians in front of the library. Barney constantly told us, “Sobriety and responsibility always begin with your first job!” even though he knew most of us took his money and bought vino with it.

75 Riley lost his job, however, when a confrontation began with some businessman who wanted to find out who was inside the chicken outfit. The asswipe started making chicken clucking noises and began scratching around on the sidewalk, flapping his blue-suited arms, like a lost buzzard, in front of Riley.

I must explain that whenever Riley becomes nervous he begins to tell jokes. Not just any jokes, mind you, as he is probably the world’s foremost authority on jokes by the late Jewish comedian, Henny Youngman. So, when this retard began to make fun of Life in his chicken suit, Riles began to pepper him with his collection of Youngman “bum” jokes: Riley: “A bum asked me, ‘Give me $10 till payday.’ I asked, ‘When's payday?’ He said, ‘I don't know, you're the one who’s working!’”

Business suit: “Squaaaack! Bwaack!”

Riley: “A bum came up to me saying, ‘I haven't eaten in two days!’ I said, ‘You should force yourself!’”

Business suit: “Cock-a-doodle-doo!”

Riley: “Another bum told me, ‘I haven't tasted food all week.’ I told him, ‘Don't worry, it still tastes the same!’”

Business suit: “Buk-buk, buk-buk, ba-gawk!”

Riley: “Another bum asked me, ‘Can I have $300 for a cup of coffee?’ I told him, ‘Coffee's a quarter!’ The bum said, ‘Yeah, but I want to drink it in Brazil!’”

Business suit: “Oooah-oooah-ooooah!”

76 Riley: “I was walking down the street, and I found a man's hand in my pocket. I asked, ‘What do you want?’ He said, ‘A match.’ I said, ‘Why didn't you ask me?’ He said, ‘I don't talk to strangers.’”

Business suit: “Ba-bak-bak-ba-gawk!”

The result of this absurd interaction was a crowd of people standing in front of the public library laughing their fool heads off and pointing at the chicken-imitating businessman and Riley inside his chicken costume spouting stand-up jokes.

Riley, as he usually does at such moments, got embarrassed and got the hell out of Dodge.

Riley came up to me that day while I was inside the library. I like to hang out there and play my mental game of “How long can I go before I get high?” I will pick up some novel (non-fiction just doesn’t keep me interested for that long), and then I’ll wait patiently as I read. I wait for my monkey-mind to begin chattering: “What the hell do you think you’re doing? You’re a dropout loser! You’re no writer. Your wife left you because you never sold one story, and now you just wait for that peaceful burn inside your belly until it moves up and clicks inside your head and numbs the pain.” It’s pretty much touch and go, and when you’re in the middle of, say, The Sound and the Fury, it’s not too difficult to put the book down and head out the door and up to University Liquors to buy your bottle of Rosé.

All the way I imagine to myself that I’ll stop tomorrow and write my own novel. I won’t let the monkey get me again. But soon, there I am, with all the other winos, floating up to Balboa’s Park with our bagged tickets to Wonderland. Nightmares will soon take over each of our realities, depending on our past, and what we are afraid of in our futures, and we’ll be alone again.

77 “Hey Professor, you got to come over to the Cid. Rusty has a new contest for us. They say it’s the biggest one ever!” Riley was standing in front of me in his chicken suit, wings on hips, orange feet pointing in all directions, and I could barely see his eyes from behind a little cloth mesh below his protruding brown beak. Several high school kids were pointing at him from a table next to mine.

They were all laughing and poking each other, and I thought about how nobody ever really came to a library to read anymore. It was useless. We now live in a totally visual and oral society.

I looked back down at Moby Dick. “What happened to your job? Never mind, tell me later.” I closed the book and stood up, stretched inside my “Stormin’ Norman” Schwarzkopf desert boots, and put my blue officer’s pilot hat back on, pulling down the flip-shades under the bill.

“Okay, Riley, let’s move out!”

We didn’t stop to get a bottle because we knew Rusty would want us all sober. It was likely to be an event such as the time he called us all out to the El Cid statue after he decided we were going to train to become astronauts. He said it would be a monumental feat to have the first homeless man as an astronaut. They had women, they had teachers, didn’t they, so why not a homeless person?

However, since we didn’t have any official training site, we ended up getting arrested at the Tidy-Way Laundromat on Third Avenue. Riley, Keith Hazzard, Hernandez and I, were each taking turns spinning around inside one of the big dryers to test our “centrifugal force proficiency.” Some conservative old biddy called the fuzz on us. Were we drunk?

Well, yes but that didn’t mean we weren’t conscientious. I’ll bet most of those real astronauts took a few belts to mellow out before being launched into outer space. I know I would! Wouldn’t you?

78 Rusty Hernandez was sitting up on the base of the El Cid statue when we got there, and his demeanor was deadly serious. He reminded me of my C. O., Air Force General Champ Sumner, in Operation Desert Storm, just before we destroyed about six divisions of Iraqi soldiers trying to scramble their way home across the desert floor between Kuwait City and Baghdad. “It’ll be like shooting fish in a barrel, men!” he told us, and he was correct. But these fish were underfed, mostly unarmed soldiers who were running for their lives from the Great Satan: us. And we made them pay for stealing oil from our millionaires. Boy, did we!

Of my 1,228 sorties, this was the one I remembered most.

In addition to our F-16 Fighting Falcons, the brass also sent in F-117 Stealth Bombers, F15 Eagles, A-10 Thunderbolt IIs, F-111s, EF-111 Ravens, and F4-G Wild Weasels. As I watched it all happen, I sort of began to go back into my childhood days in front of the Nintendo. It was the only way I could cope. I guess those kids who slaughtered their school enemies at Columbine High School in Colorado felt the same way. When you’re in “kill mode,” the enemy becomes just so many pixels on a surreal playing board. You keep your eyes fixed in the crosshairs, and nothing is real anymore. Except afterward.

I began having these vivid dreams of men blowing up just below me, their brains, intestines, limbs, all flying up toward me in my fighter jet; but, instead of splattering against my cockpit like so many harmless pieces of dead meat from hell, I suddenly had no jet to fly. I was flying by myself; it was just my carcass, and the body parts hit me like a ton of bricks. I begin plummeting, downward toward the desert, and as I do so, the ground suddenly morphs into the gigantic head of my wife, Mildred, and I see I am plunging head over heels into her open, cadaverous mouth!

79 Needless to say, Mildred soon got irritated by all my drinking and my nightmares, and when I decided I wanted to teach in the community colleges because I could no longer stand flying for United Airlines, she really hit the roof. “How am I supposed to hold my head up with all my friends?” she asked, standing there in her cute white tennis shorts and halter, burning those cold blue eyes back at me. I raised my chin and smiled. “Like this?” I joked, but it was no joke to Mildred. She moved out the next day, back into her father’s house out on Coronado Island.

“The Republicans are having themselves a whale of a shindig here in Insane Diego, gentlemen, and I think we should celebrate their arrival! Our dear Republican Mayor, Marjorie Elston-Hughes, has decided she’s going to keep San Diego clean by getting rid of the homeless people who may prove to be embarrassing to our city officials.”

“I got their em-bare-ass-ment,” said Riley, pulling down his pants and mooning the gathered throng of about twenty-five homeless vets. We all laughed and pointed at Riley’s skinny butt.

“Cover that up, Riley, you’re gonna attract flies,” said Hernandez. “We’re about to have a contest in honor of the Republican National Convention.

And the prize is something you’ve all been waiting for.” Rusty reached into his field jacket and brought out what looked like an airline ticket. “We’ve collected money from veterans, and I have here round-trip airfare for two to Washington D.C. This will be awarded to the champions of the First Annual San Diego Survivor Contest. It will include a first-class tour of all of the Veterans’ Memorials in our great nation’s capitol, and a two-night’s stay at the Watergate Hotel, in honor of our late great President, and California’s Governor, Richard M. Nixon, who got us the hell out of Vietnam!”

80 We all cheered and pounded each other on the back.

Several men rattled their shopping carts and threw aluminum cans in the air.

“Hey Rusty! Nixon was never governor. He lost the election to Pat Brown,” I said, ever the historical perfectionist.

“Whatever, dude, he should have been! Now let me lay down the ground rules for our Survivor Contest. Only homeless veterans can enter. The winners will be the two partners who best endure the street sweeps by police and party officials.

You gotta have your story officially evaluated by my committee of judges. Harry Walters, Ben Small and my glorious self—as well as the spirit of Balboa —will listen to your tale of survival and determine the winner. Is that clear, you cream-jean vets?”

We all screamed, “Yeah!”

“Well, what are you waiting for? engines!”

Start your friggin’

*** Riley and I decided we could survive best in disguises of some sort.

Therefore, we risked one of the boldest maneuvers ever and took showers at The Landing Zone, the recovery home for Vets on Sixth Avenue. A few of the recovering vets there thought they’d help us out, so they gave us some of their “Vanishing Middle Class” duds to wear. However, I still kept my pilot’s cap on, as it gave me confidence. I knew we would need it.

The key to being homeless in San Diego is not to look like you’re homeless. For example, I know several vets who panhandle in La Jolla, one of the richest areas of the

81 county. They accomplish this feat by wearing jogging gear and, quite often, they actually do jog around a bit to keep the police from rousting them. There are so many joggers in La Jolla that my friends are able to mix right in! Of course, you can still tell they’re homeless if you get right next to them. Their teeth are stained with tobacco and in need of care, their hair is unkempt and often dirty, and they have that forever sunshine, deep bronze tan that one gets from being out-of-doors 24/7.

Certainly, when they’re getting wrecked, they look like anybody else who gets drunk in jogging sweats.

Riley and I began our quest to dodge the sweeps in downtown San Diego by hanging out at Barney Mussolli’s place on Broadway. Barney probably has the worst name for a chicken take-out one could ever invent: “A Wing and a Prayer.” Barney was also a former pilot in the Navy (F14s), and he sold more hot chicken wings than anything else on his menu; ergo, the stupid name. Riley always gives Barney—the eternal optimist--a hard time, and Life greeted him this day with a one-liner, “What's the use of happiness? It can't buy you money!”

Barney was slinging wings and things behind the counter.

He had sauce all over the front of his apron and it looked like an Italian Rorschach test. His bushy, gray-flecked eyebrows bounced up and down as he deep-fried his chicken and set out orders for his one server, Juan, to deliver to his collection of patrons and ne’er-do-wells.

Juan was an illegal who had a computerized fake ID. We sat down at the table by the window facing Broadway and “watched the broads on Broadway,” as Riley called it.

The place was covered in photos of different aircraft, and I felt nervous just being there. At the same time, I knew we

82 had to tell Barney what we were trying to do. After I told him about the contest, he listened intently as I continued.

“The way we figure it, we just need to look like regular San Diegans until these sweeps are completed.

The other homeless vets will be trying to macho it out with them, and they’ll get sent packing in no time. We, on the other hand, are planning to infiltrate the metro ambience and play it cool. You know, man, the way we could have won in both Vietnam and in Iraq. Intelligent espionage work is what’s needed against terrorists. Catch my drift, Barney?”

“I've got all the money I'll ever need, if I die by four o'clock,” said Riley, his Youngman brain broadcasting like an MP3 player on crack cocaine.

“Yeah, I can see where the intelligence comes from,” Mussolli smirked, pointing a greasy thumb at Life, who was staring out at a purple-throated pigeon crapping on the window sill. “Speaking of terrorists, what makes you think these political sweepers won’t be asking for IDs and proof of residence? In fact, I’m sending Juan here home in a few minutes. No tellin’ what kind of spy gear they’ll have with them.”

That’s when I had the idea that changed everything.

“Look, Barney, we’re going to stay here because it’s our right as citizens to dine where we want and with the freedom to sit where we want to dine. Hell, it’s the hallmark of the Civil Rights Movement, isn’t it? Dr. King would be proud of us. That’s why you’re going to let us sit here and wait out these sweeps. We’ll establish what King called ‘creative tension.’ We need to establish a crisis that’s so dramatic that San Diego will be forced to negotiate with us. That’s what we’re going to do, Barney.

Homeless vets are being treated like shit in this town. We get five hundred dollar vagrancy fines just for hanging out.

83 We get rousted out of our sleep to move on when all we want is the same dignity as any animal that lives in the wild. Don’t worry, we’ll practice non-violent protest, or ‘ahimsa,’ as Gandhi called it. But we shall overcome!”

“I once wanted to become an atheist, but I gave up . . . they have no holidays,” said Riley.

“I don’t know, Spencer, it seems to me you just want to raise hell and get my place closed down.” Mussolli put down his tongs and wiped his brow with his forearm. “I can’t afford no bad publicity. I got a family at home to consider.”

“No, you’ll get some good publicity. Just feed us coffee, and stand behind everything I tell them. We’re going to practice what King called ‘agape.’

Unconditional love, creative love that can move mountains. We’re doing the six steps for non-violent social change: 1. Information Gathering. 2. Education. 3. Personal Commitment. 4.

Negotiations. 5. Direct Action. 6. Reconciliation. See, we’re already up to step three. When they come in here, we’ll be ready to negotiate, and that will set in motion steps 5 and 6. You’ll see. It will be a cake walk. Just let me use your cell to make a few calls first.”

“You know what I did before I got married?” reflected Riley, “anything I wanted to.” *** Meanwhile, out on Coronado Island, Mildred was watching the events unfold on television. She was having the following argument with her father, Rear Admiral Dwight C. Evans. Mildred’s mother had died when she was five, and she was left living with her right-wing, lifer father:

84 Mildred: “Look, Daddy, it’s Richard.

She’s talking with him.”

And the mayor.

Admiral Evans: “I can see. Another one of his tirades against the city, I assume. I should have expected as much since it’s the Republican Convention. What you ever saw in that young man, I’ll never understand.”

Mildred: “No, listen. He’s telling the mayor he wants amnesty for all the homeless vets. If they can show they have proper identification, then they should be protected within city limits. That sounds fair.”

Admiral Evans: “They’re all alcoholics and panhandlers.

They’re no good to anyone. How can they do anything for the community other than to be a burden? Trust me, Mildred, you’re well rid of that loser.”

Mildred: “Richard has a document he’s giving to the mayor. She’s signing it! He’s finally achieving something noble, Daddy! That’s what he told me he needed to do to repair the psychic damage of his war experiences.”

Admiral Evans: “That man will never be repaired. He’s an embarrassment to the military and to all it stands for.”

Mildred: “Look, the people are cheering for him. The Republican conventioneers are even applauding. I’m going downtown to see him. I don’t care what you say!”

Admiral Evans: “Mildred, if you leave this house, you will no longer be a daughter of mine! Do you hear me?”

Mildred: “I’m sick and tired of singing ‘God Bless America’ before every meal. Richard was correct. You lifers are all the same. You see everything from your eagle’s eye view.

You never come down to earth with the rest of us who have to clean up all your messes.”

85 Admiral Evans: “Mildred, come back here! I’m not taking you back anymore. You can just rot in hell with that communist!”

Mildred (as she bangs out the back door of the three-story mansion): “He’s not a communist, Daddy.

He’s a socialist. You never knew the difference.” *** After I got Mayor Elston-Hughes to sign the vets’ agreement, I knew we should go back to Balboa’s Park to tell Hernandez and his committee our story. We were certain to win the prize. The marine layer was coming in that day about four in the afternoon, and it was an eerie effect as we walked into the park and down the road leading to the El Cid statue at the entrance to the museums. When I explained to Riley what we would win, he was anxious to give me one of his teetotaler lectures.

“You gotta stay off the hooch, man,” said Life, walking backward in front of me as we neared the statue of El Cid. “The whole freaking city knows you now. It wouldn’t be right if you got wasted.”

“Hey, mi hermanos!

Como estas?”

The voice of Hernandez was coming from the fog that cut the horse and rider in half. We couldn’t see the top of El Cid; it was so damned foggy. However, we knew Rusty was up there, because, once in awhile, a can of Budweiser came whistling out of the clouds and down onto the pavement at the base of the statue.

“Oh shit,” I muttered, under my breath. I then squinted up at the statue and spoke into the fog. “Rusty? You up there, man? What the hell’s going on? Are you guys wasted?”

86 Riley began running in circles around the statue and shouting. “They spent the money, man! They don’t have the trip tickets! We can’t go now, I just know it! They got wasted on our money! It’s not fair, man. It’s not fair!”

“We saw you on the tube, man,” said Rusty, the voice from the cloud of El Cid. “You think you’re big shots now, don’t you? You think you’re the big savior of San Diego vets?

Shit, man. You’re like all the rest of the white shirts.

Sure, I sold the tickets. We talked about it, and those pussies didn’t want to sell them. So I did it myself. We don’t need some sell-out stooges making a deal with the city about our lives. You dig? I am the leader around here! I am the El Cid! There’s no future in what you said on the TV. All that Dr. King bullshit about brotherhood and community of the spirit. You know what the spirit means, man? It’s the spirit of the warrior. Just like El Cid. I was wrong about him. He was a symbol to his men, and they were willing to die for him even though they knew he was already dead. You’re not a hero until you’re dead, man, and that’s a fact!”

I could hear Hernandez trying to move down off the statue, but then, out of the fog, we saw his big form come rocketing down toward us. He had slipped, and his body hit the cement like a sack of pinto beans. When his head cracked down on the pavement, I knew he was dead.

Riley walked up to the body, which was oozing blood fast, and said, “I’m paid to make an idiot out of myself. Why do you do it for free?”

Just then, from out of the fog came another figure, a female one. “Richard? Is that you? What happened here?”

87 It was Mildred, and she was wearing a fox fur jacket with a hood. Her tight jeans looked terrific--better than I had seen in months. “Just a drunk,” I told her, “he was climbing on that stupid statue, and he fell.

Call the University Hospital.”

“Certainly!” she said, and she dialed in the numbers.

The marine layer began easing off as the darkness came to Balboa’s Park. We could finally see El Cid on his horse, and Rusty Hernadez looked frail and meekly human lying in a pool of his own blood at the base of the huge statue.

He was like some kind of offering, or a curse, or a warning to veterans everywhere.

He was certainly a messenger to me, as I swore off the booze that very night.

As I walked home with Mildred and Riley, we were planning to stay at a hotel nearby and use up my wife’s credit card, until her daddy turned off the funds, which may have already occurred. I figured I could get my teaching job back.

When Riley ditched us to go drink with the guys in Balboa’s Park, he spoke to us, one last time, looking back over his thin shoulders. I could see his grizzled jowls move up and down, and I thought about the madness of existence and about why some of us stayed sober and some of us didn’t.

Was it luck or was it an act of will power? I was not certain, but I was ready to try my best at recovery. Here is what Life Riley said. Perhaps you can make some sense out of it, “I don’t believe in reincarnation, but what were you when you were alive?”

88

Turning the Law Wheel Following her job at the Shanghai Wild Animal Park, Meiying Connors is chosen to sell Marla King Cosmetics.

She knows it is because of her Occidental looks and the wheel of law.

Her father, Army Sergeant Charles Connors, is a black Korean War prisoner who was transferred to Beijing in 1969, and then she was born, in 1986, into a family that is usually considered a pariah to the People’s Revolutionary Party. Meiying’s mother, Xiao-xiao, dies when Meiying is born, and Meiying spends most of her developmental years on the road with her father making movies for the Communist Party.

Because of Sergeant Connors’ American good looks, Meiying’s father is used as a propaganda tool. Films are made by the Ministry of Culture about how communism is so much more compassionate to “people of color,” and Charles is viewed by audiences lifting bales of hay on a communal farm and smiling and joking with his fellow workers.

Or, he is seen standing with some Party dignitaries at the launching of a new war ship or some other new weapon meant to stop the “tide of Western Imperialism.”

89 Her father is later employed in Chinese movies as the “evil American officer” who is always defeated by the People’s military hero. Even though she knows her father secretly drinks too much and smokes big cigars, she also understands that he loves his job because he believes in China’s future. In fact, he tells her, just before he dies of a heart attack, “Back in Alabama, where I was born, I would be lucky to be just another poor nigger working in the fields or inside some factory. In China, I am a movie star.

The world has awakened a sleeping giant, my daughter. China will now lead the way.”

When her father dies, the government has a big funeral for him out on Tiananmen Square. That’s where Meiying first meets Colonel Wang Dongbin. Colonel Wang is the Beijing head of the People’s Ministry of Culture. It is here at her father’s death celebration that Meiying is given her first chance to work for the government.

“The Shanghai Animal Olympics are to be the great precursor to the World Olympics,” Colonel Wang tells her at her father’s funeral.

She sits across from him on a hard bench in Tiananmen Square. The goose-stepping members of the People’s Liberation Army march past them, and the wind kicks up colored paper strewn over the huge expanse of concrete.

Meiying can feel the vibration of the soldiers’ boots hitting the pavement.

Colonel Wang explains to her that she will be important to the country’s attempt to lure the West into more business relations with China. “You, if you will excuse my boldness, are one of them,” says Colonel Wang, smiling broadly and patting her hand. “We want you to work at the Animal Olympics so they can see we employ all kinds of ethnic groups.”

90 Meiying knows she is being used as a token for propaganda purposes, just as her father was used before her; but, in modern China, one does what one can do for personal survival. *** Meiying’s time in Shanghai is being scheduled and paid for by the government.

As China is hosting the human Olympics in 2008, the government believes that if they give their annual animal Olympics a world audience then more people will want to come to their event in Beijing.

Meiying has never attended the animal Olympics, which have been going on for four years but her friends have.

They tell her it is a lot of fun, and the shopping in Shanghai is supposed to be much better than in Beijing.

She is put up in the Amercian-style, Four Seasons Hotel, Number 500 Weihai Road, near the People’s Square. She is also given a Jiaotong card, which can be used in the subway, taxis, buses and boats. It seems she can also use it in McDonald’s, although there is usually at least a twohour wait for Shanghai fast food. Meiying prefers to take her own lunch of dumplings and tea when she rides the subway to the Shanghai Wild Animal Park. Located at Sanzao Town in Nanhui District, it takes her approximately forty minutes by rail to get there. Meiying notices that most of the passengers in Shanghai push and shove to get on and off the train.

They also never smile.

She remembers her father’s smile, and she also remembers the pictures of Americans she has seen. They always seem to be smiling.

Her American appearance, even though she is a chocolate color, causes Meiying to get appointed by the park committee to the job of official greeter at the main gate leading into the 153 hectares of park. The park, which

91 contains the largest zoo in China, was first opened in 1995.

She is told by her supervisor, a woman named Zhung Dandan that she is to smile and speak only English to any foreign tourists who come to see the Animal Olympics.

Mrs. Zhung has graying hair, bad teeth, glasses that always need cleaning and the accent of a recent immigrant from the provinces.

Her Mandarin is also full of grammatical errors.

The first day on the job allows Meiying to meet many Western tourists. Most of them are visiting China for the first time, and their eyes are wide as they take in all the sights, sounds and smells, and they show an instant gratitude when she addresses them in her excellent English. “Welcome to the Shanghai Animal Olympics!” she says, unaware of what they will soon see inside the park.

All Meiying knows about the event is that there are 26 Chinese provinces represented in these games, and there will be a variety of races and other enjoyable competitions for the children and the adults.

Later that evening, back in the hotel’s workout room, an American Chinese man invites Meiying to dinner. The man does not work out on the equipment. Instead, he stands in a patch of light by the window and does some strange looking exercises that look like Tai Chi, but his regimen has a deeper, meditative quality. He is a handsome man in his early forties, with clean-cut, oiled black hair, and he sports a white shirt and tie under a black business suit that is the American style of Brooks Brothers.

He tells Meiying over a dinner of prawns and spicy tofu that his name is Li Hongzhi, and he is from New York City.

And then, as casually as if he is telling her it is getting late, he says, “You could be arrested for being with me. I would be imprisoned and then executed.”

92 “Who are you?” Meiying asks, in-between bites. afraid this man could be dangerous.

She is

“I am in disguise right now,” he says, “and I have come back to China to enlist your help. My Zhuan Falun group believes the Animal Olympics is cultivating evil. The world is getting the wrong message about China. Therefore, I would like you to help me stop this evil practice.”

Meiying now understands. She knows the Falun Gong. In 1999, the number of Falun Dafa members outnumbered members of the Chinese Communist Party. Thereafter, the government made the practice of “turning the law wheel” illegal in China. However, here she is, sitting with the expatriate leader of the most dangerous cult in China.

“Are you aware of what goes on inside the Wild Animal Park?” Mr. Li asks.

“No, I am told to greet foreign visitors at the gate. What goes on inside is not my concern,” Meiying says, putting down her chopsticks.

“We cultivate the universal law. Each of us has a law wheel inside that tells us how to let go of attachments such as zealotry, selfishness, greed, lust and pursuit. I am called the ‘living Buddha,’ and I am here to teach followers about how to use their law wheel.” Mr. Li smiles, and Meiying sees the light of his seventy million adherents inside this smile.

“And so, what is the government doing that is against the universal law?” she asks.

“Your government does not allow people and animals to be what they were meant to be. It forces its will upon the people and other sentient beings, and these sacred beings

93 become tools for their sinful purposes. For example, in your Animal Olympics, bears are being forced to box each other. Clown men box with kangaroos, monkeys and bears are forced to race on tiny bicycles, and poodle dogs are required to stand on their hind legs all day.” Mr. Li speaks with a calm voice. “All of the animals witnessed were in an inappropriate environment, unable to express even the most basic natural behavior and under constant stress. The Moon Bears were forced to stand all day and clap their hands continuously, and one poor blind Moon Bear was repeatedly jabbed with a metal stick every time he moved. As with many of the animals in the park, his spirit was completely broken.”

Meiying sees his point, but she also has a bit of her father in her, so she attempts to rebut Master Li’s argument with one of her own. “But is this important? How can there be any work or organized society unless there are guided instructions? These animals are not being tortured, are they? True, they are being conditioned to do things they would not normally do, but this is all for the sake of entertainment, is it not?

Are we not allowed to be entertained? The Olympic athletes condition themselves to perform at their peak, do they not? The government pays for this conditioning also. Is this not a sinful attachment as well?”

“Yes! The human athletes are often forced to take performance-enhancing drugs, just so they will be victorious for the government. Human beings, however, have a choice. Animals do not. These blessed sentient beings must do what we teach them to do. If we do not stop this ill treatment of animals, then the government will get bolder in its treatment of human beings.”

94 Mr. Li’s tone suddenly became grave, and he bent toward her with a flaming look of intense concern in his eyes.

“Your government has arrested hundreds of thousands of my followers. They are being tortured in prisons, and they are also being used as living sources of body parts.”

“What? Body parts? You don’t mean . . .” Meiying’s voice trails off in abject horror.

“Do you know what a live kidney brings on the open black market these days? Westerners pay communist doctors on the average of $11,000 American dollars for a live kidney.

If the government can reap such profits from my followers, what will come next? Vital organs, perhaps? First, the government controls the animals in zoo prisons. Next, they control the people in State prisons.”

“Tell me what to do,” says Meiying. “I’ll do anything you tell me.” *** For the first four weeks of the Shanghai Animal Olympics, Meiying Connors secretly hands out English language pamphlets to foreigners warning them of what is taking place inside the park.

Soon, the British and Australian presses are doing stories on the “abuse of animals,” and animal rights groups in the West are taking up the cause by the millions. Americans visiting the Olympics are outraged also, especially the wealthy wives of industrialists, who are often radical advocates of animal rights.

The uproar is all over the Internet, and the word finally reaches Communist Party Headquarters in Beijing and

95 Colonel Wang Dongbin. Colonel Wang takes the first train he can get to visit the Shanghai Animal Olympics.

Meiying is inside her hotel room when Colonel Wang knocks on her door. She answers it, and the short man strides into the room, and his demeanor is livid and his face is red.

“Do you know what happened here?” he asks, drumming his fingers on the front of his legs. “How did the foreign press get involved?”

“I have no knowledge of what occurred, Colonel. I never even went inside the park.” Meiying’s voice is calm. She is, she believes, turning the law wheel inside her.

“I have arrested the committee in charge of the Wild Animal Park. They will not come up with such bright ideas in the future!” he says, and he turns to leave. “You, Miss Connors, will go back to Beijing.

You are no longer employed by the government, so turn in all your clothing and other supplies.”

That night, as Meiying stands outside on her balcony overlooking the People’s Square, she does her qigong, or enlightened physical exercise. The lights are brilliant, and the fireworks go off on Nanjing Road, sending a sizzling radiance into her heart. She feels calm and warm, and her path seems noble. *** On the anniversary of Charles Connors’ death, Meiying visits her father’s tomb on Tiananmen Square.

The foreigners will soon arrive to attend the Chinese Summer Olympic Games. The New China is quickly destroying the Old China. The small town farmers in the provinces are

96 being attacked by the government so as to make room for larger factories and bigger roads. The air is veiled with smog and Meiying’s eyes sting as she stands before the monument to her father. His smiling, ebony face gazes back at her, and she smiles.

“Miss Connors?” The voice behind her startles Meiying.

She turns abruptly around to face Zhung Dandan, her old supervisor from Shanghai.

“Mrs. Zhung! How good to see you again,” says Meiying, and she hugs the older woman.

“My master wishes for you to have this,” says the old woman, and she hands Meiying a small envelope. “Keep turning the wheel,” she says, and just as quickly as she has appeared, she is gone.

The envelope contains official notice of her employment as a beauty consultant for Marla King Cosmetics. She will soon visit the new homes of modern Chinese women who want to join the Western culture of beauty and hope for a better day. She will also win the award as the “best salesperson of the year in Beijing,” and her reward is a trip to New York City to visit corporate headquarters and be wined and dined with all the other best salespeople from all over the world.

The handsome face of Master Li, however, fills her consciousness. He is the one who gave her the gift of the law wheel, and it is he she wants to visit when she arrives in New York. In return for his kindness, Meiying spreads the word of Fulan Dafa to all the women she meets. The wheel of law must continue, even in a world of attachments and desires.

97 In front of the monument to her father, the American Charles Connors, Meiying does her qigong. She is not afraid of the government. She does not fear her future.

She simply breathes in the universal law, lifts her right leg, centers her being, and lets the law turn her wheel.

98

La Casa de Raphael When Connie’s mother, Sybil, called me, I had just gotten off mid watch. It was the end of September, and we had traffic up the yin-yang, as the battle group was ready to pull out for Iraq in a week, and the Admiral wanted everything taken care of before we shoved off. I was on the U.S.S. Pocono, the flagship of Commander Amphibious Forces, Atlantic (Comphiblant) in Little Creek, Virginia. I am an IT1 (Information Technician First Class). At 21, I am one of the youngest petty officers on board, and I’m proud of it. I aced every exam for rate that I took, and I got recommendations every qualification period since boot camp at the Great Lakes in Illinois. We ITs are loved aboard ship because we handle all communications from State-side, and we set up all the families who are able to get together over the Internet and send each other online digital videos.

Chief Frye flagged me down as I was going top-side. “Hey, Winchell! You have a call.”

I took the phone and immediately heard the soft voice of Mrs. Sybil Bonaventura. She always tries to sound like Marilyn Monroe or some other sexy starlet when she talks on the phone. Connie once explained to me that the older generation never got into the naturalness of phone talk the way we have. Sybil drew out her words and whispered

99 them, as if we were plotting an overthrow of the government together.

“Bernie, we have to talk. Connie is so very excited about this that I can hardly keep her from exerting herself beyond her capacity.

Actually, what she wants is completely insane, and I should have her committed!”

“Calm down, Mrs. B. Yes, we can talk. I should be there in twenty minutes. You know, it’s two in the morning.”

“Yes, deeeear. I know what time it is. I’ll have the coffee on.”

I thanked Chief Frye, handed him the phone, and I headed top-side.

I began to think about Connie. She was my high school sweetheart, and I loved her more than life, but that’s just it. My dear Connie, she was the first girl I ever kissed when I told her in fifth grade that every time I kissed her a little angel was born in heaven. What a crock! It worked, however, and she still reminds me of all the angels. She even has it down to a science. Our hello kisses create guardian angels. Our goodbye kisses create nature angels who protect mountains, rivers and other worthy places where we venture. Finally, our love-making kisses create archangels, like Michael, who give us the Truth and protect us from being completely destroyed by evil. Connie even said that people’s friendly kisses give birth to the messenger angels, who visit us and tell us about the wonderful world to come. It’s this last part that always makes me cry. My Connie, at nineteen years of age, is dying of terminal cancer. She has leukemia, the kind that makes your red blood cells turn white. Connie says she is turning white like an angel. I want to hit her when she

100 talks about dying. Instead, I kiss her, and another angel is born. *** Sybil was at the kitchen table, her favorite hang-out. Bob Dylan was playing over her CD speakers, as I put my white hat on the corner of a chair and sat down. She was smoking again, as this stuff with Connie had started her old “Hippie habit” again. I tried not to breathe in the noxious fumes, as I really am a health-conscious guy.

However, I can understand the stress Sybil was going through. There were a lot of guys in my unit who smoked.

Iraq is not a popular war, despite what our leaders were saying.

Sybil is a pretty hot looking mother-in-law. She is slender, like Connie, and her black hair has no gray at age forty.

She is Italian, and she loves to cook new dishes and watch you eat her food. Connie calls her a “food vulture” when she does this, as she hangs over your shoulder, waiting expectantly for your verdict on her latest concoction.

She grabbed my hands and stared intently into my eyes. I can see that her dark pupils were constricted from the caffeine. “Bernie, you must tell her it’s crazy!” She said, a pleading in her raspy voice that I immediately recognized as a mixture of panic, doom and fear for what I would say to her in response.

“Hey, Mrs. B., you gotta settle down here. You know? One step at a time? Easy does it? Put down that cancer stick, and tell me. What’s all the fuss?”

It all came out in a rush. If Connie’s father, Ben, was still alive, he would have said it was his wife’s “locomotive express” coming into the station. She could pour out more

101 information in one breath than one of the Admiral’s emails to the fleet.

“Connie wants a wedding. She said because she’ll never go to college or have any kids, she wants something to take with her when she goes. She says you wouldn’t protest. She wants to go to heaven with memories of her as a bride standing next to you. Besides, we don’t know how long you’ll have to stay in Iraq. Doctors say she has less than a year. What if you’re not home? We have to do it now! So, what do you think? Is it going to be possible?

I know. It’ll just be ghastly! Maybe we should all dress up like the Addams Family and have the flower ghoul roll a coffin down the aisle.” Sybil began to laugh and cry at the same time.

I finally had to get up and put my arm around her shoulders. She had been everything to her daughter and me since her husband died in a freak accident at work. My parents had died in an automobile accident when I was in boot camp, so when this happened Mrs. B. and I became immediate soul mates. Ben was a general contractor, and he was working at a job in Roanoke. He was driving onto the site in the morning, and some worker on the tenth floor of the office building under construction dropped his riveting gun. It crashed through the top of Ben’s pick-up and killed him instantly. When Connie was diagnosed with Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia (ALL) just a year later, we thought we might have to put a suicide watch on Sybil.

However, it was Connie who was able to bring her mother out of it. My girl has a magical way of making people forget their problems. In this instance, she did it with her digital video camera and her eternally creative, child-like innocence. She told her mother they were going to record their days together and that I would convert the digital

102 files into streaming video movies to be placed on the Web. Sybil was a bit of a Hippie-type in the seventies, and she is into Cosmic and New Age stuff. Connie reminded her mother that Tim Leary had his death recorded and broadcast live over the Internet. Dr. Leary even believed that when he took those hallucinogenic drugs and passed on that his web site was his connection with the infinite physical realm of the Cosmos. Since that day, Sybil has been shadowing Connie everywhere she goes: the market, her job at the hospital, even her visits to see me at Little Creek; they’re all being converted for the “Connie Bonaventura Memorial Web Site.”

Connie is so funny and lovable everywhere she goes that we are certain her site will soon surpass Dr. Leary’s in popularity. Why? The angels, of course! Believe it or not, there have been filmed sightings of angels photographed in the same frame as my beloved. When we spotted the first one, we thought it was some mix-up with the conversion process. Sometimes, if the frame rate is not set correctly, or the color filter goes haywire, strange shapes or even human figures appear, as if out of nowhere, inside the picture. That’s not the case with Connie’s angels. We have verified seventeen occurrences of these visions in a variety of forms and poses, behind or in close proximity to our Connie.

I’ll be getting back to these angels in a moment, but first let me explain what happened after Mrs. B. finished telling me about the wedding. It was a no-brainer that I was going to go ahead with the ceremony, as Connie’s wishes were mine. In fact, the entire idea gave me goosebumps.

I really wondered if I had the courage to carry it out. This was not to be the case, however, and the wedding was one of the most fantastic occasions in recorded history. In fact, we had national TV stations recording it, and when I

103 kissed the bride, Connie whispered in my ear, “There goes a special angel, Bernie,” and this was to be the turning point in my story, my life, and perhaps even in yours. *** If you’re guessing that the media picked up on the angels’ story, you would be correct. “Connie’s Angels” became the most emailed video at YouTube™. Twenty-seven major newspapers, fifteen magazines and all the major TV networks covered our story.

It had all the elements needed by the media: youth, marriage, death, and the supernatural. And, of course, there was the fact that I was going to Iraq. It is this last element that became the “chink in Michael’s armor,” so to speak, and it all began with my Admiral, Comphiblant himself, Richard Walters III. After the wedding, Connie suddenly had a relapse. She was weak, and the doctors who examined her said she needed immediate treatment. The cancer had formed a tumor on Connie’s brain, and chemotherapy and drugs were required. She was airlifted by Medevac helicopter to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, as Admiral Walters had personally signed the authorization. It seems he had seen the videos of our wedding, and he had taken a personal interest in my Connie’s health. He had also given me indefinite shore leave until Connie’s situation was taken care of.

Connie was going to get the full treatment: Chemo, External beam radiation and the usual medication treatment for her leukemia. However, the doctors said surgery was out of question for her type of Glioblastoma multiforme brain tumor. In fact, they told Mrs. B. and myself, as we sat across from them in the consulting room (there were five doctors, not one who was ranked under a full commander), “We don’t think Connie has much longer,

104 I’m afraid. What we do now will be to attempt to cause a remission.”

They also said they would attempt to cause some of the malignant cancer cells to, in effect, commit suicide. They would be using an experimental drug that might cause some strange “side effects.”

Normally, cells at the end of their lives die naturally by “committing suicide,” a process known as apoptosis. But cancer cells can bypass this process and carry on multiplying indefinitely. To reverse this, researchers screened 20,000 synthetic compounds to find the trigger for the protein which causes cells to kill themselves. Cell death occurs when a protein known as procaspase-3 is converted into another called caspace-3, which triggers apoptosis. Using a synthetic compound known as PAC-1 they were able to activate procaspase-3 in cancer cells grown in the laboratory and in mouse models, causing apoptosis.

"By bypassing the broken pathway, we can use the cells' own machinery to destroy themselves," said researcher Commander Ray Johnson. "This is the first in what could be a host of organic compounds with the ability to directly activate executioner enzymes," he added.

Leave it to Connie to come up with the short-hand definition of what they were going to do to her. She said the Navy was going to use “micro suicide bombers” to get her cancer. Needless to say, the Navy did not support her terminology. *** What occurred during those next few weeks became the most talked about phenomenon on the Internet. It all

105 began one night when Connie celled me at the hotel where I was staying with her mother. We had two separate rooms, all expenses paid by the Navy, courtesy of Admiral Walters.

“Bernie, he’s here. Our big guy is in the room with me right now,” she whispered, and I could tell she was scared from the tremor in her voice.

“He? Who do you mean, Con? No guests but family, that’s the rule, sweetheart.” I said. Dr. Johnson said there might be some side-effects, and I supposed Connie was having some kind of hallucination from the drugs.

“It’s Raphael. He’s heaven’s top healing angel. He’s way taller than you, six feet six or seven. He has long, straight ash-blonde hair that comes down about two inches below his shoulders. I know, not regulation length, but his eyes.

My God, Bernie, his elf-like green eyes make me feel good all over!”

I decided to play along with her for the moment. “Okay, Connie. Does he have wings? What’s he wearing? Does he have a pot gut like John Travolta did when he played Michael in the movie?” I chuckled at my own joke.

“That’s just it, Bernie. His body is not real. It looks like the body below his head is made of static electricity. He looks a lot like those figures we saw in the videos that Mom took. But, I can hear him. His voice is transforming, just like his eyes. They soothe me so much I want to jump out of bed and dance!”

“No, honey, I wouldn’t do that. Stay quiet. I’ll come right over with your mother,” I told her, reaching for my coat.

It was fall, and the weather was turning nippy. The first rains had fallen that day, and it was lightening outside the

106 window of the hotel room. wasn’t relapsing.

I shivered.

I hoped Connie

I also called Dr. Johnson, and he was waiting for us when we arrived. He wore his Navy uniform, as he was the Office of the Deck (OOD) on duty at the hospital. He was smiling, which was a good sign.

“Hello folks. I’m glad you came. There’s nothing to worry about. Connie is just experiencing some mental delusions from all the new drugs she’s been taking. It’s quite common. It’s good to just humor her and wait until her body becomes used to them.”

“Oh, thank goodness!” said Sybil, clutching at the good doctor’s strong arm. “Bernie said it might be something like that. How is she otherwise?”

“Well, she’s insisting that you come in with the video camera to record this apparition. It seems this Raphael wants to make a presentation of some kind for all humanity.” Dr. Johnson chuckled. “Let’s just play along with her. It can’t do any real harm. Her system seems to be fighting the cancer quite well. This could be some kind of positive reaction to what her body is feeling as a cure or possibly even as a full remission from the cancer. This is what we’ve been waiting for, actually.”

“Bernie, go down to the car and get my camera. We’ll do this!” said Sybil, and I sprinted for the elevators. *** That evening, as it was ten at night, when I turned to go into the hospital, I saw a huge shooting star swoop out of the western sky above the parking lot. It crossed the inky sky in a streak of light that shone much brighter than

107 anything I had ever seen before. More powerful than a Peacekeeper missile, it suddenly turned down and sped toward me.

Was this a meteor about to strike the hospital? The great ball of fire sped past me and suddenly stopped, hovering just before one of the windows of the hospital. It glared for a few moments more, and then it disappeared. I ran up the stairs to the hospital with the camera.

As I rode up in the elevator to the seventh floor, I wondered if this shooting star had anything to do with Connie and her vision. I was soon to find out.

“Great! Bernie, give Mom the camera. Raphael wants to speak. Isn’t he gorgeous?” Connie was sitting up in bed with tubes in her nostrils and many fluid injections streaming through smaller plastic tubes into her arms and legs. She was quite a sight, but she was smiling beneath her Darth Vader impersonation.

We, of course, couldn’t see anything in the room with us, but when I cast a questioning glance over at Dr. Johnson, he just nodded for me to continue in the charade of his young patient.

“Start filming, Mother! He’s speaking!”

Sybil began to wave the camera in front of her, not knowing where to point.

“Over there, Mother.

Beside the roses,” said Connie, pointing to the big table in the room that held dozens of differently colored roses from all over the country.

The camera began to whir, and then there was complete silence. It was as if we were present at some kind of Wonderland tea party, but our little Alice was the only one

108 who could see the guest. As the time passed, Connie’s eyes began to tear up, and she nodded her head in agreement. Finally, she broke down and began to bawl like a baby. It was a very uncomfortable feeling. I went over to soothe Connie, as did her mother, and she finally slumped back against the pillow and exhaled.

“Wasn’t he magnificent? Bernie, I want you to take this video and get it on the web site as soon as you can. Don’t you know what this means?”

I pushed a raven lock of hair away from Connie’s haunted brown eyes. “What does it mean, love?” I asked.

“It means we’ll all be healed. If everyone can get his message, we’ll all be healed!” Connie closed her eyes and fell into a deep sleep. *** I am a nerd. I admit it. I had my laptop and my hotspot connection to the Net. I also had all the digital video equipment in my hotel room to take a look at the video that Mrs. B. had shot inside the hospital room. Needless to say, I wanted to produce the digital video, if only to show Connie what those drugs had done to her mental faculties. However, when I inserted the camera cable into the USB port, and it began feeding onto my hard drive, I suddenly had a strange, expectant feeling run through me like the time we were off the coast of Iraq and Chief Frye pointed to the alignment of the crescent moon and Venus in the sky above the ship. “Hey kid, see that? That means it’s the beginning of Ramadan,” he explained, and he continued, “The best known symbol of Ramadan is the moon or the crescent moon which signifies a concurrence of the moon and the planet Venus that took place in the morning sky of July 23, 610. According to many this was

109 the night on the month of Ramadan in which the Prophet Mohammad received the first verses of the Holy Quran from angel Gabriel.”

The Archangel, Gabriel!

The Archangel, Raphael!

As the video began playing, I turned up the volume and listened to the most transfixing voice I had ever heard in my life. This voice surpassed the mesmerizing voices of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Pope John XXIII, Billy Graham or any of them. And the figure who spoke was clearly standing in front of the rose table in Connie’s hospital room. He was, indeed, well over six feet six, and his hair was long and blonde. And his body, his body was as radiant as the shooting star I had seen flash across the September night’s sky.

I bring you the message from I am that I am. The world shall be healed, just as this woman has been healed.

Listen to my words, people of the flesh! I control the microbe, the atom, the finite reality that you assume to be your existence. Look into each other’s eyes. What do you see? You see the same flesh in different shades of life.

Just as my Earth bathes you with her glory, and you reap her bounty, I shall now tell you how to bathe each other with the wisdom of the Healing Truth. Shut down the machines of war!

They devour the Earth’s blessed sacraments: fossils, waters, fish, plants, and all other living things that keep you walking upright in your world of flesh. Any object that cuts, explodes, harms or blinds shall be piled on top of each other and destroyed in a gigantic fire! Hear me, oh people of the flesh, before it is too late! Your inventions of destruction will disintegrate your fleshly world. Turn to the Light of Truth. Listen to the inventors of healing wisdom. The solar, the wind, the waters, they all contain the answers to your healing powers.

I shall protect you as you shut down the

110 machinations of destruction and turn to the healing powers of doctors, nurses, teachers, and holy scribes and facilitators. This is the Truth, as spoken for the great I am that I am. Peace be with you, and with your coming Spirit. For it is with the inner light that you will gain wisdom, and this wisdom will shut down the weapons of destruction, and heal your bodies, and this woman shall be a symbol of my wisdom for all time!

As if Sybil knew when to turn the camera on Connie, the frame was suddenly filled by the sleeping figure of my lovely young wife. Without questioning what I was doing, I immediately converted the video into a streaming file, and then I uploaded it onto our web site. However, in my haste to let the world experience the words of this Raphael, I had forgotten about Admiral Walters and the fact that our web site was on a government server. *** By the next night, there were over four-hundred thousand hits on our web site. We were getting emails by the hundreds a minute. Everybody wanted to know when to start collecting the weapons and where to take them. I got the call from Admiral Walters at about seven that night.

“Petty Officer Winchell?” said the Admiral. This was the first time the old man had ever spoken to me, other than when I made first class and he did a photo op, and when he signed the papers for Connie to get into Bethesda, and he did another photo op.

“Yes sir!” I said.

111 “I want that web site secured immediately! I want you to erase the hard drive containing everything on that site!

That’s a direct order, Sailor, is that understood?”

“Aye, aye, sir!” I said, and I hung up.

It would have been easy to do as the Admiral instructed, but I could not. All I saw in my mind’s eye were the faces of all those world leaders who were provoking this war of terror upon what Raphael had called our “fleshly existence.” Whether this apparition had cured my Connie or the new drug administered by Dr. Johnson, I didn’t really care. I was fed up with the military, and I was going to try to carry out the words of Connie’s archangel. This was the angel that had been born from our wedding, and I was going to do everything in my limited power to save him and his words of hope.

I backed up the web site onto a portable hard drive, and then I erased the government’s drive. I put this hard drive containing all of our files, especially the video of Raphael’s visit, into my sea bag, and I left the hotel, never to return to my home town or to the United States of America. *** Outside, I can hear the wind and the rain. There’s a lot of it here. We are in the village of Paso Real, located in the Mexican state of Guerrero. Guerrero is a poor area, where peasants often clash with police. It has a long history of spawning guerrilla groups, and in the last year there were persistent reports that a new one was emerging -- reports that authorities continually played down.

However, there is a different kind of guerrilla movement here. It is one about which the world will soon know.

Inside the tiny church, La Casa de Raphael, we have

112 erected a shrine. In addition, once a month, I travel out of the mountains and down into Mexico City, where I work on our web site. We broadcast our messages from Raphael to the world, and the world is responding.

All religious peoples are bringing their wares to our village. They dismantle them, they collect them, and they even blow them up in their own countries. We are broadcasting over an encrypted and private web site. I learned my lessons well in the Navy, and I could do this, even though I was a wanted man. If they ever catch me, I will probably be placed in one of their legal and secret CIA prisons in some far off village that is being supported by the warmongers who are still out there, drumming up more hate, more destruction and more propaganda.

You know them. Turn on your news. They stare out at you and speak their convoluted wisdom about the destruction of the flesh. I was once one of their followers —a patriotic boy whose family was the government. Not any longer. As I listen to rain, I get up from my simple bed and walk out into it. The waters are pure on my body as I walk in the muddy, yet clean mountain earth toward our church.

Inside, my wife and Sybil are praying at the window, overlooking the deep ravine below. Our church is located on the mountain overlooking a deep valley of lush green vegetation. However, as I walk to the window and stand behind Connie and her mother, I can see the stacks of metal, guns, hollowed-out ammunitions, piled up as far as the eye can see. These were given by our pilgrims, escorted by supernatural beings, as a gift to Raphael and the great I am that I am. Tonight, after the dances and the prayers, we will have a bon fire. I suppose Tom Wolfe, one of your satirists, might call it a “bon fire of the vanities,” but we keep it going. Who knows? The fires are

113 getting much bigger, and the word is spreading. However, we often wonder, as we look straight into the brown eyes of our infant daughter, “When will they find us?�

114

The Lady or the Tiger?

I tried to please my father by going to his alma mater, Cal Berkeley, and I even majored in PoliSci, but I became too involved in the Free Speech Movement, and I was one of those “marked” by the Feds that day when we rioted after they arrested Mario Savio. I was called into the local FBI office and told that I could either join the Navy or serve some prison time for my “seditious activities.” I served in Vietnam for two drafted years, as a Navy Seal, and I saw many men die agonizing deaths—some of them by my hands.

Now I am a carpenter, after all these years, and my wife, Jane, is dying. My only solace is my thoughts as I plane wood, pound nails and varnish sanded banisters leading to nowhere. I know she is up there, lying in bed, as we have no insurance for hospice care, and we get the drugs to ease her pain from all her friends from the years of nursing she did at the University Medical Center. I greet a nurse each week, usually a Filipina, who brings Jane her dosage of morphine. This is, of course, totally illegal, but these are the times when many of us Americans are stooping to such drastic measures for our loved ones. Therefore, I will offer the kind woman a cup of tea or some other respite, and she will usually decline, rushing, instead, up the stairs that I built, but never a word about the beauty of my finely

115 crafted workmanship, just a quick trip up into Jane’s loft of quiet dying.

Sometimes, as I am working on the house, I do a lot of thinking. One of Jane’s girlfriends once said that Jesus, a carpenter like me, had the humblest job in Israel. She said, “Carpenters were the lowest type of workers, and Jesus and his friends were, most likely, totally illiterate.”

That bit of information stuck in my craw. Not because this woman was a Jew and taught Bible as Literature at a local community college but because I know carpenters are not humble! Why would God make his son a carpenter if the job were low class? We carpenters, as I see it, have a lot of time to think very deeply about life and death, and this is my main argument against this good lady’s assertion.

Jane, who has no family, only me, has become my cause célèbre these days. We met on a commune in France. It was springtime, and I was left alone to tend the animals for a month. The others were partying in town after doing their hallucinogens. I needed no drugs, as I had just gotten word that my father had died. He had long ago cast me out of his lawyer’s will, as I was the misguided “hippie freak,” as he had called me that day before I left the country of my birth. As I sat and talked softly to the sheep, chickens and pigs, I suppose I had a bit of an epiphany. I knew I was going to become a carpenter— yes, just like Jesus! These animals needed the shelter I could build, and they thanked me, by God, by looking kindly at me as I stroked their mammalian fur and fed them with delicate attention. Jane came in on me feeding and talking to these animals.

She was joining our commune from Holland, her birthplace, and she told me later she “loved me at first sight.” When I asked her why, she said, “You were so kind to all those animals. I knew you would be kind to me.”

116 I don’t feel so kind these days. I can hear Jane screaming out in pain, and my agony flies up into the rafters to join her. I never realized how painful cancer could be. It is beyond even the relief that morphine, the high sacrament in the Church of Drugs, can bring! Wounded men on the battlefield are transfigured into instantaneous reverie—I have seen it work its wonders! Our generation was the generation of the Counter-culture, was it not? We played with drugs like kids in a candy store; we tasted sweet sexual rendezvous and experimented with our inner connection to deeper spiritual levels: Dr. Tim Leary, Bob Dylan, the Summer of Love, Carlos Castaneda, the Beatles, we all did our part to tear down the old paradigm of the Establishment’s rules. However, there is no inner peace while my Jane languishes upstairs, in the house that I built, the house that has seen us go childless for these many years, saw us constructing room after room as a shrine to our loneliness.

I heard that the wife of William Wirt Winchester went crazy after her husband died. She was told by a fortune teller that she would be haunted by the victims of her husband’s weapon invention if she did not construct something new in her house every year. The Winchester House in San Jose is like our house. It has stairs that lead nowhere; it has a “spy room” near the middle of the house and quite high up where Mrs. Winchester watched the workers—the carpenters—as they created the intricate structures of hobby and whim, something that I can readily attest to, something that can keep one from going insane.

Jane is my Mrs. Winchester. She is high above, and I picture her watching me, when the pain has subsided, watching my bulging muscles as they strike out in bold invention, creating a new piece of sturdy edifice and protective cornice, or a vaulted ceiling that rises up, up

117 into the night of my lonely dreams. “Raise high the roof beam, carpenter!” I shouted, the other evening, when I finished the chimney, and Jane came down the stairs, woozy from her rush of morphine. This is the truth: we knelt down and prayed up into my new chimney. Don’t you see? Before the funeral business in this country, the chimney was believed to be the place where the soul would fly up and out into heaven. It was the hearth, the mantle of masculine pride, the site of Christmas cheer and revelry, and this was why we held hands and prayed over my handiwork. All my political education can go to hell! My father, who ate hard tack and drank water inside his little room on Telegraph Avenue, as he studied to pass the Bar during his Depression days at Boalt Hall. I never made it to law school, Father, but I am building my wife a solid ceiling and a chimney, by God! Yes, Jesus was a carpenter. As the days pass, and Jane gets weaker, I can identify with this man Jesus and his job.

His friends were “fishers of men,” but Jesus was the carpenter. He constructed their coffins, did he not? He died for their sins, did he not? He built the temple, the houses, the shops in the market, the structures that shielded his fellow Jews from inclement weather. And, as he worked, he would think, as I do, about life, death and eternity. Until, one day, it became too much, and he decided to give it all over to his fate.

“Billy!” I can hear her calling me. The women loved Jesus so; he gave his own life for them. They did not forsake him as his disciples did. No, he knew they would be there for him in the end. I know this is true, and yet, for an instant, I believe I, too, can save the world. My funds have run out. Perhaps the Jew teacher was correct. We carpenters are the humblest people alive. We, ultimately,

118 have no taste for greed and success. until it gets the best of us.

We keep building

I drove last night past the tract homes and the glass buildings of our New Age. The computers that wreak havoc with our privacy, the steadily encroaching terrorism created by the backlash, the blowback of our imperialistic advances into other countries, and if only Jane and I could have had one child!

She, who was condemned to childlessness by using the Dalkon Shield in her socialist Holland! A shield that came between us and our future, and now she calls me from above. I should have agreed to adopt a child, the way she wanted us to. I am such a selfish fool! I must go up, put down my tools, and put down my worries, once and for all.

She is so beautiful lying in our water bed. We are in our sixties, and yet the light from the window casts a glow of heavenly insight on our bodies. I want to hold her now, please forgive me. I can write no longer. Will it be the lady or the tiger, you ask? The tiger is on the wood dresser between two adjoining angels—one good and one evil--that I built with my own two hands. The Asiatic, golden tiger holds the drug of infinity inside his open jaws.

We got the tiger on our trip to India. The men in the shops of Bombay would stare at Jane wearing her shorts and halter in “The Sixties.” The lady or the tiger? Jesus was a carpenter, and he died for our sins. I am going to lie down now, next to my love, my communal bliss, my heaven on earth. We shall both rest, peacefully, as the stars come out to shine down on our hearth and home.

Om, shanti, shanti!

119

Sirens I used to drink in all the high class bars and nightclubs.

You know, those swanky places downtown where one tips the waiters (all six of them) and the hostess, and one can smell the cologne on the cloth napkins? However, ever since my business investments have gone sour (I was part of the subprime mortgage crew), and I have acquired my new-found conscience (it’s funny how alcohol makes one introspective about life), I like to hang out at what my mother, a grand matron of the Hudson River Valley, would have called one of the “seedier” establishments.

After the Fascist take-over by a succession of mayors in New York, it’s really difficult to find a seedy bar to drink in.

However, I like a bar that’s on the Hudson River near Cortlandt. It’s called the Paradise Bar & Grill, and it’s located in the hamlet of Verplanck. I know, you’re saying to yourselves, “Verplanck? Cortlandt? That’s the suburbs, man! Westchester. You can’t throw a quarter in there without hitting a Mercedes.” Yes, it’s true, we are a Yankee community, steeped in Revolutionary War tradition and marinated in Daughters of the American Revolution.

The joke inside the Paradise is, “How many Verplanck fishermen does it take to screw a Daughter of the Revolution? It takes 1,776. One to shtup her and 1,775 to envy him.”

120 Why do rich people envy? Think about it. The world of the wealthy consists of making certain you keep up with the other rich people. Not only do you have to stay rich, but you also have to have the latest cultural icon, family historical tree, patriotic connection or any other classysounding link with the rich tradition that abounds in this neck of the Hendrick Hudson woods. What’s my link, you ask? My link is that I first heard the Sirens.

In most taverns, I would be the guy who sits on the corner of the bar, next to the bartender (in this case, his name is Vito, as the Paradise is an Italian tavern, and Vito is the owner’s brother-in-law), so he can get the best vantage point to view the cocktail waitresses, who scurry to and fro from the bar to the tables. As a former New York City lawyer, I can keep Vito and the girls mildly entertained with my combination of gutter humor and satirical jabs at the wealthy town folk, until I get too wasted, and then Vito just kindly calls me a cab, and I am shuttled off to my boarding house room on the Point, the Campbell House, a former Federal building that used to house real fishermen who traveled up and down the Hudson from New York City to Albany. Today, I get a pretty good price for my room at the Point, because the Campbell house is soon going to be bulldozed to make room for private enterprise. No more Federal buildings in Verplanck, by God! Private enterprise is now the Yankee tradition.

The first Siren I heard was the night following the Verplanck Easter Egg Hunt. A lot of the townspeople were in the Paradise that night, as they wanted to get away from their kids for awhile and have a cold one (why is it always “one” with these normal drinkers?) and discuss the latest gossip.

121 I was seated on my usual red-cushioned bar stool, asking Maureen Flaherty, my favorite cocktail waitress and single parent, whose kid goes to Our Lady of Mt. Caramel School, if she knew what was black and white, black and white and black and white? She said she didn’t know, so I told her, “A nun rolling down a hill,” and she actually laughed. But, just as she turned to go, and I was watching her nicely shaped legs as they vibrated their stocking selves out toward the mass of boozing humanity, I heard the first great wail.

At first, I thought it was the Verplanck Fire Department testing one of their new sirens for us, as our town has more employees in the fire department than we have police, teachers and city hall employees combined, and they like to “strut their stuff” quite often, when they get their latest toy from the Department of Homeland Security or the Society to Prevent Global Warming. However, this siren sounded otherworldly, and it did not have the conventional “whoop” or “whine” that most mechanical or pneumatic horns have. This sound was loud, yes, but it was also wavy, and the vibrato it contained was definitely human and not a machine.

“You hear that?” I asked Vito, who was doing his perpetual routine of washing glasses and then drying them on his towel that said “Save Venice—it’s Sinking!”

“Nah, I can’t hear nothing over this chatter, David. It must be those dog ears of yours!” said Vito, chuckling at his own joke.

“No, listen. It’s a siren wailing. Wait a minute,” I said, and I actually got up from my stool and headed for the front door. Everybody in the establishment turned to look at me, as it was a rare night indeed when David J. Kaufman, Esquire, got up from his bar stool! It usually

122 meant the Messiah was coming, or I was going to do some drunken stand-up comedy and a few songs for them. This time, it was neither, and I was poised at the front entrance with my hand perched on the lion’s head door knob from the movie Cinema Paradiso, that the owner, Sam Parino, bought off E-Bay. As I opened the wooden door, I turned to my assembled Easter Egg Rolling folk, who were working on Easter Egg Nog Hangovers, and said, “Listen! Do you all hear that?”

Maureen Flaherty, bless her, came over to stand beside me, and she had the cutest expression on her pixie-like face, and with her turned-up Irish nose twitching, she said, “It sounds like someone’s calling the cows home,” and that’s when the women started nodding in agreement.

Ed Walsh, the town’s mayor, pushed his brawny way through the crowd and to the door. He stuck his cigarmouthed red head out the door as if he, alone, had real ears. “It sounds like it’s coming from the Half Moon.” He was, of course, referring to our hamlet’s recreation of the Dutch (actually he was a British) Explorer, American Native slaughterer, and land buyer-upper, Hendrick Hudson’s 1609 sailing ship, which was docked down on the river at King Marine.

This is the strange part: the sirens only affected the men.

The women simply yawned and played with their hair, while we men began to fantasize about a naked songstress. Yes, and it was the same naked woman we all dreamed at once. We compared her description, and each of us had the same vision of her. She had long, red hair and she was completely nude, sitting on a rock out in the river. The brown nipples on her breasts were firmly jutting out, perky in the cold wind, and the water was sloshing between her thighs, foaming in and out, rhythmically, and

123 we all described being pulled into those thighs, until we became lost inside her womb, seemingly forever, inside her moist darkness.

As we all snapped out of our reveries, I came to first.

“C’mon, men, what are we waiting for? Let’s go down and see where these women are coming from!”

We must have been quite a sight that day, as most of the male population of our little hamlet trudged, like lovestruck zombies, down to the Hudson River at King Marine.

The women, in a rather frustrated pack, followed us from behind, whispering among themselves about what could have possibly gotten into us.

We could still hear the siren’s call as we approached the Half Moon, which was in her usual slip at the dock, bobbing up and down in the moonlight like some ancient artifact from a bygone era. Our sea-going link with the past seemed to be a kind of prophetic harbinger of what was soon to come.

Many of our men were convulsing in ecstasy, literally tearing at their clothes as they walked, clutching their crotches like dancing Michael Jacksons, letting the music of the songstress pour into their bodies like aural heroin. It seemed like only myself and the mayor were together enough to think about anything, and the idea came to us almost at the same moment, immediately following what we then saw out on the river.

Just beyond the bow of the Half Moon, sitting on a large buoy, was the first siren. In the twilight, we could still see well enough to notice she was the one doing the singing, and she was—to our total shock and amazement—part bird and part woman!

Her torso was completely and anatomically female—a red-haired, voluptuous femme,

124 with two piquant breasts, a succulent, ruby-red mouth, and, yes, those twisting bare buttocks, which were enveloped around the brown buoy like white globes from heaven. The rest of her, however, was all bird; gigantic white wings sprouted from her alabaster shoulders and hung against her sinuous sides; her long, flowing red tail feathers jutted up from the waves as they lapped against the buoy’s surface while the metallic cork rocked her delicate body to and fro.

The back of her was also completely feathered in white, almost glowingly white down, that glistened under the moonlight and drove the men on the dock wild.

“Look, she’s taking off!” I said, as the siren rose up from the buoy and began to circle the pier.

Her song penetrated us like a charge of lethally magnetic energy— and several of the men began running in circles on the dock, hitting each other, and screaming passionately up at their beautiful tormentor.

That’s when we had our idea. Both Ed Walsh and I said, together, “Let’s get on the boat! We must follow her!”

What happened next was quite a contrast to what had occurred earlier. Instead of a disorganized, love-struck gang of retards, we all became focused on getting our vessel ready for her voyage. Captain Sherm Molitor, who was permanently stationed aboard the craft, along with his skeleton crew of six men and one woman, were instructing everybody as to which sail to man, which rope needed to be cast off, and, finally, where we would be stationed during our reckless chase after the siren, who was now circling around above us, like a lost angel, singing down at us with her song of rapture.

As she began to fly down river, we began our journey, with the women screaming and yelling at us from the Marine

125 dock. “Are you fucking insane?” I could hear Maureen Flaherty’s voice above the rest of them. “Where are you going?”

I yelled at her, in the loudest voice I could muster, as our 1609 replica pulled away from the pier, “These are the Sirens, Maureen! We have to follow her to find her sisters.

They lure men to their deaths! We have to stop them!” I found myself catching my breath as soon as the words were out of my mouth. To their deaths? You mean, we’re the ones who are being lured, you stupid shit! We’re not stopping anybody. *** We sailed for two days up the Hudson, until we reached Adams, Massachusetts and the waters of the Hoosic River, where the Hudson begins. Sherm told me, as I turned the main sail into the wind, that Adams was named after former President, Samuel Adams, and that Women’s Suffragist Susan B. Anthony was born there. “Hey, it makes sense, doesn’t it?” I said, listening carefully for the call of the siren.

“What? Nothing has made sense yet on this goose chase,” said Captain Molitor, pulling at his salt-and-pepper beard and puffing at his briar pipe.

“That these Sirens would live near the birthplace of a Woman’s Libber,” I said, smiling at the irony.

“Look, David, I don’t quite know how we got up here, and I have to keep pinching myself to remember what I saw back there at the pier, but don’t you think we’ve taken this too far already? The men are all hungry, and we can’t go much farther up river, you know.”

126 “That’s why I think it’s right here!”

As if on cue, I looked up into the morning sky and saw our red-head twirling above us. She was far enough above to look like just another big bird of some kind, and nobody else would have known what we knew about her powers, unless they were with us down river three days before.

The siren began her descent, and we all watched from above decks, standing at the railing, as she swooped down toward a patch of land out in the middle of the Hoosic.

She careened expertly through the air, keeping up her constant piercing wail of mesmerizing song, until she landed on the little, rocky island.

I used to do some singing in my youth. I was the lead singer in a college rock and roll group called the Seven Princes. I could hold my own in any karaoke bar, let’s just say, and it was when the red siren landed that I saw that we were in trouble. The men on board suddenly began to shout and push at each other with crazed anxiety. Their eyes were glazed over and red-veined from lack of sleep.

They first took hold of the Captain, and then me. Ed Walsh, the mayor, seemed to be the ringleader of the mutinous men, and he spoke for them. White flecks of spittle had formed at the corners of his mouth, and he spat the words out in anguish, “We have to go in now! Can’t you hear them calling? They want us now! Oh, sweet Jesus! They want us!” and he lifted up his red head and he began to howl, like a sex-crazed baboon, into the morning wind. The other men soon took up his call and they, too, began to scream out, hoping to attract the attention of the women on the rocky island in the water, about ten kilometers from us, dead ahead.

“Tie them to the main mast!” ordered Ed Walsh, and three men each tied the Captain and me, with rope, to opposite

127 sides of the center post on the quarterdeck. We were powerless to stop them, as they turned our little ship into the wind and toward the rocky island. On the wind, we could hear the desperate calls of the three sirens. I twisted and turned on the post, until my hands were raw.

As we came closer to the jagged rocks of the island, Captain Molitor screamed at them, “You’ll get us smashed on the rocks! You’re all crazy! You can’t go in there, you fools!”

I knew they were being called to their destruction by the cries of the sirens, and it was then I had an idea. In college, I had read the stories of Jason and the Argonauts, and I knew how Orpheus was able to save his fellow crewmembers from just such a predicament, so I began to sing out loudly from my imprisoned body, lashed against the main sail mast like Prometheus Bound. I sang the only song I could remember from our old college rock group, and the song was “Stairway to Heaven.”

At first, I thought my song was working the same way Orpheus had prevented his crew from sailing into the rocks, as the men stopped for a moment to listen to me. “. . . and you’re buying a stairway . . .” I belted the words out, but, suddenly, they all turned away from me and began to sing their own song.

Their ears, it seemed, were not filled with wax; I had forgotten this small detail, so they could still hear the calls of the femme fatales on the oncoming rocks ahead of us. I heard the bow crush into the granite, and I saw men being devoured by waves and thrown overboard, screaming wildly, as the demon women came flying down upon them, tearing into their flesh with their sharp talons and ripping apart their living organs, to devour as snacks, as they

128 flew, around and around our sinking ship, like the birds of prey that they were. *** Just two houses down from the Susan B. Anthony Museum, I have now set up a bar and restaurant called “The Three Sirens Inn.” We cater to tourists, as most of the mills and other manufacturing businesses have long since flown off to China and parts unknown. However, our place is a popular one, and it is on nights such as this one, when it’s raining outside, and the storm’s thunder and lightning make it especially affective to our clientele’s imaginations, that Captain Molitor and I, from behind the bar, tell our story about that day when our ship was dashed against the rocks of Siren Island in the middle of the Hoosic River.

The jaws on the tourists’ faces drop; as we explain how the entire crew was eaten alive by the flying and singing trio of cannibal women, and that we would have also been destroyed had it not been for the red-head. She swooped down at us, her talons slicing through the rope, releasing us, and then she motioned for me to grab hold of her body, and I did, and her sister did the same for Captain Molitor, and we were both rescued by these two sirens, and they flew us over to the mainland and dropped us right on the green banks of Adams, Massachusetts.

“And that’s why we named our place The Three Sirens,” I said, and one of the tourists always looks doubtful, and says, “But why three? Only two of them helped you.”

That’s when I motioned for my baby girl, Eliza Marie, to come out into the bar. She was now five years old, and her voice was quite melodious and clearly attractive to the

129 audience, especially the men, as she sang “Stairway to Heaven” for them.

And of course, Red, her mother, was peeking into our bar from the outside darkness in the back alley, the rain pelting down on her white and ruffled wings, tears mixing with the drops on her beautiful pink cheeks. My siren, my wife, and my daughter’s mother, often tells me, when we’re alone together in our room adjacent to the restaurant, that I’m a much better man now that I don’t drink. She tells me how she first fell in love with my voice inside the Paradise, and she knew she must have me, even if it took the destruction of an entire town to do it. Of course, old Captain Molitor, who is also wedded to her sister, is not about to leave our happy community now that his ship has been sunk. Besides, he enjoys the looks on the faces of all the tourists as they hear our story, and we both enjoy our little flights around town, late at night, when everybody else is sleeping and we can cruise with our lovers across the full moon, and listen to their songs, made just for us.

130

Texting Bill first met Zonica Brown at a college party. It was one of the tons of parties held by USD students at one of the offcampus condos owned by some alumnus big shot, and Bill liked going to these parties because they always had the best food and the best conversation.

As usual, Bill was being ignored, as he was in “full text mode,” slipping in and out of circles of people like a Dickens gutter snipe, wearing his black jeans, black turtle neck, black Dr. Marten’s boots, and black watch cap, with his ever-present black Lenny Kravitz aviator glasses. He was like a reincarnated Marcel Marceau, entertaining the children of the wealthy.

Bill would get notified about the party by his cell phone, and he could pick-and-choose whichever party he wanted to attend, as he had become a minor celebrity because of his political stand and his vow of silence, and many students—especially the college crowd—thought he was pretty cool for doing what he was doing. They thought it was especially awesome that he was standing up to his English professor father, as most of these students thought that English teachers were relics from the Dark Ages of three-channel TV and one telephone per household.

Professor Crowley was detested by the current undergrads, and his students’ comments on RateYourProfessor.com

131 were filled with warnings about his antiquated attitudes toward literature and toward his students, so most of the students totally sympathized with Bill Jr. and his plight.

However, they also understood that Bill was a “ticking bomb,” as they knew many students like him who had ultimately crashed and burned, getting into heavy drugs, slipping into deep depression, and sometimes committing suicide. Therefore, the college students kept a wary distance from Bill, allowing him to eat at their parties, but keeping him away from the drugs and booze, and they would “plug in” to chat with him by text to get a few laughs or they would watch him do one of his political pantomimes, all the while, deep in their hearts, knowing this kid could freak out totally and explode. *** Bill no longer talked to people. It was his vow of silence, so he explained in his text messages. He even had a sign for it, which was just being drunk but without the ). His vow of silence was :# .

All of this began during an innocent enough morning conversation with his father on a rainy Tuesday. The “Moms,” a medical doctor and administrator, was already busy with her job at Mercy Hospital. As usual, his father was bemoaning the students he gets in his English and literature classes. Bill the 2nd wondered why his father griped about what were, in fact, his bread and butter, his students. But, gripe he did, “I ask them the first day, you know, just to break the ice. What’s your favorite book? Not one raises a hand. Okay, then I ask if they’ve ever read a book from cover to cover. Maybe two or three raise their hands in a class of thirty students. Can you believe it?

Then, we get into a discussion about how they get their information, and most of them use the Internet, but most

132 of their sites are social sites, nothing newsworthy, or, God forbid, academic in quality.”

Then, a strange thing happened. Bill’s father’s words suddenly became jumbled and nonsensical to Bill Junior’s ears. “I wilryd the spellming of the crospackt forsmict.

Dalganger fiprich toosp vingsprey eccchomadse!” The human voice had become absurd, and young Bill was on his way to his new destiny.

Later that morning, as he sat inside the classroom at La Jolla High--he believed it was in Honors English with Dr. Dryer--Bill began to think about his vow of silence. As Dryer droned on about Orson Welles or H. G. Wells, or Orson Scott Card, or George Orwell, or some other white hero writer of his, Bill thought about how half the world was now connected via the cell phone and the Internet. He had college friends who sped through video and audio lectures of their professors at twice the speed and still could retain information to spit back on their tests. His generation could process digital information faster and more accurately than any humans in history. He and his friends could cheat any exam ever concocted by any teacher. Most teachers didn’t know the first thing about the intricate ways of cell phone cheating with images sent to their screens, and text messages sent with answers, and labels printed out with mathematics, physics, biology and history answers and crib sheets photo shopped onto the labels and glued to a Coke bottle, water bottle or other items that were permitted during tests. Then, there were the micro cameras and the images sent to sunglasses and all kinds of hats, ready to be viewed by the cheating student at a second’s notice. Competition meant more ways to cheat in society, as witnessed by the rigged elections in Florida and Ohio and the steroids and Human Growth Hormones in athletics.

133 Bill’s father and guys like Dr. Dryer did not understand it at all. They thought the world was still “transformed from within” by reading words on a page. Bill knew that was not so, and it would never be so again. His generation and the generations to come were transformed by movement, by energy and by the application of technology in the interests of power and control over others. The environmental nightmare was inevitable, and his poor father just did not understand it. *** The American Dream was popping into rainbow-colored bursts all around them. First there was the Dotcom bubble, the Global Warming bubble, then the Mortgage bubble, and, finally, the Student bubble. Bill was doing his pantomime of it all in the middle of the living room. He mimed the Student bust by collecting everybody’s cell phones, putting them into a long row, like dominoes, and then causing the row to collapse on each other, circling all around, like a technological snake of doom. All the while the phones are collapsing and their unique ring tones are playing their Tower of Babel favorites; Bill does a wild dance, jumping in and out of the circles of phones, silently waving his arms frantically, arms and legs akimbo, his face contorting into a visage of sheer terror. The college students all laugh, sheepishly picking up their phones after the event, like guilty consumers. As they did this, Bill mocked them, his own cell phone placed at his ear as he mimicked it being stuck there, and then he put it at his crotch, like a penis, his mouth creating silent and obscene conversations, his eyebrows twitching, his lips puckering and manufacturing kissing noises.

134 Exhausted, Bill slid down against the wall, playing with his cell phone, munching on a red hot chicken wing. His phone began to ring. It was a text from Zonica: “YROYOCC,” it said. (“You’re running on your own cuckoo clock.”)

“TEOTWAWKI,” he responded. (“The end of the world as we know it.”)

“TFDS,” she said. (“That’s for damned sure.”)

“GAP?” he asked. (“Got a pic?”)

She sent him her photo, a color portrait shot. She was also dressed in Goth attire, her purple eye shadow encircling the most gorgeous pixie-blue peepers that he had ever seen on a female. Her lips were full and also violet and her blonde bangs fell over her forehead in a rebellious wisp that covered her eyebrows. Up her crossed arms slithered two ornately Asian dragons, etched on there forever by some wonderful body tattoo artist.

They exchanged ASLMH (Age, sex, location, music and hobbies). Then, the moment of truth came. Bill looked up from his cell and his eyes surveyed the room like a lighthouse beacon. There were six girls on their cells, and Bill’s gaze moved to each one, comparing the pix on the screen to the flesh and blood version in the room. Not one of the girls looked like Zonica. She wasn’t in the room. So, he got up and started walking, from room to room, looking for his mystery girl. There were kids in the bedroom 420 (smoking marijuana). There was a bunch of 1174 (nude club) participants in the pool outside. However, Zonica was nowhere to be found.

135 For the following two weeks, Bill would get texts from Zonica at parties he attended, but he could never find her physical self, and it was beginning to stress him out. In addition, his mother and father were calling him to get him to come back home and try school again. However, since he was now a senior and 18, he told them—threatened them actually—with emancipation. His father was his usual, traditional self with, “You understand that without an education you’re throwing away any chance at a functional life? Even if you learned a medical skill, or auto mechanics, you could still salvage a decent living. Don’t you want that, son?” All these carefully crafted words on his cell phone screen looked alien to Bill, as if they were written by some historical character from the distant past.

He might as well be texting with Shakespeare, he thought to himself, as he texted back “DORD” (department of redundancy department) and “DPUP” don’t poop your pants. He knew his father would not bother to look up his cell phone acronyms, as he often said it was beneath him to stoop to the level of his illiterate students. Bill knew that was all he was to his father, just another student.

Moms was a different story. When she called, Bill thought he could text her in plain English and reach her emotionally. After all, even though she was an administrator and physician, she had been his mother. She had raised and nurtured him during his formative years, and she understood a lot of what he believed about the world and its problems. When he told her how he was existing outside the home, she marveled at his creativity.

“That’s quite amazing, William,” she said over the phone after he explained it all to her in his long text. “Marcel Marceau made quite a decent living, actually. Why don’t you find a professional mime who can mentor you? I’ll help you look, honey, how would that be?” she asked. In this respect, she was just like his father. They both believed

136 life could be solved by moving logically from point A to point B. They did not understand that he was someone who realized life’s destiny by intuitively doing things and not by using “tried and true” logic. As a result, the conversations with his mother always ended with her promising to pay his cell phone bill and infusing his bank account with subsistence money. “Don’t tell your father I’m doing this,” she would whisper, conspiratorially. “It’ll be our little secret.”

Bill was not impressed. In fact, at that very moment, Bill began seriously planning his own death. *** The professional mime appeared at a party near USD. He wore white face, star eyes, a bowler hat and black leotards. He began to entertain the students by choosing a person at random and following him or her around, mimicking with exaggerated splendor each of their mannerisms, so it made them look ridiculous. Being ridiculed was the best form of humor for the college crowd, and Bill was amazed at how they enjoyed it. They all whooped and applauded and raised their drinks in a toast to the mime when he finished.

Next, the mime began his main routine. The sign held up to the crowd said: “Atomic Age”. He began by miming the explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, his body rising up and spreading out voluminously, with the excellent accompaniment of a Shakuhachi flute played by a student in the front row. After the mushroom cloud was formed with his body, he immediately fell to the floor and writhed in agony, as if his entire carcass were being engulfed with radioactivity, his eyes flashing, his face grimacing, and his fists pounding the floor in pain. Then, rising up, as if from the ashes, his body became a tall and proud missile, hands

137 at his sides, and the flute played a count-down. Finally, on the final note, he exploded, not up, but forward, running at each of the onlookers in the front row, and, as he reached each one, the flute played an off-key, loudly vibrating note that caused the listeners to cover their ears. Then, as if becoming Nature herself, he mimed a flower dying, his hands became a bird falling from flight to the earth, and his legs did a dance macabre, a combination moon-walk and paralysis, as if the explosion were creating a destruction of the human body so devastating that the mime’s personification became a tribute to a dream-like horror of death itself.

The applause was loud and the cheers were deeply moving, as the mime left the room. Bill just stood there for a moment, transfixed, attempting to collect his thoughts.

He knew he needed to follow this person and find out how he could learn such moves and artistic body language. It must have been his mother who sent this mime here, and he believed his mother was correct. This was his calling, and the moment to learn was now.

Bill could not catch the mime, but the next day, he received an email on his cell directing him to YouTube to view a series of videos done by the most famous mimes around the world. Jewel Walker, Desmond Jones, Marcel Marceau, Adam Darius, Robert Shields, Mummenschanz, Claude Kipnis and Richmond Shepard. Each video demonstrated a routine done with musical accompaniment or without, but Bill was able to see the variety of physical movements and sequences necessary to carry out the artistic rendering. He practiced each one, many times, and over the next three months, Bill became an expert in his own right, practicing his moves on various college campuses around San Diego, to the enjoyment of the

138 students, who would circle around him and watch, in fascination, as he did his improvised acts.

He texted his mother, but she told him she did not send the mime to the party. He did not have any idea who this person could be, but he reasoned that this mime was the same person who sent him the educational videos. Like clock-work, the emails and text messages continued from this mysterious teacher, and the last one was a video of his guru, who was performing in front of the Museum of Natural History in Balboa Park. A large crowd was gathered around him, applauding his routines and obviously enjoying the act. Then, the video cut to a close-up of the mime, alone in his dark room, staring into the camera and smiling. He could see the words form with those full lips, “Come to the park. Be with me,” he was saying, silently, and Bill was transfixed with joy. *** Bill Crowley Junior joined the mime at Balboa Park in October. They did Halloween routines, miming vampire, witch and zombie characters that would swoop upon the crowds of squealing visitors, teeth flashing, and spooky music from the playlist would come blaring through the digital speakers in the center of the circle. The people loved them. His partner and teacher, still silent and mysteriously uncommunicative other than through written instructions about which mime act they were doing that day, would share the money they earned, and they would eat silently at some restaurant in the park. One night it would be the Museum of Modern Art Patio and the next night it would be Lady Carolyn’s Pub in the Old Globe pavilion, or, in a big splurge, they would dine at the Prado inside the House of Hospitality, where many wedding receptions were held throughout the year. Their dinners

139 were always silent, with each mime locked inside his personal world.

Bill’s parents were quite happy to see their son doing something productive with what he had learned. They believed this mime person had come just at the right moment. Bill Jr. no longer drank or did drugs, and his attitude was changing into an optimistic skepticism about life and politics. Bill still was practicing his vow of silence, but at least he was productively living, so they let him move back into the house.

In November, Bill received a text message from his teacher. It said, “Meet me in Room 512, at Mercy Hospital.” Bill immediately felt panic. What was this? Was his partner dying? Was he ill? Bill took the bus to the hospital and rode the elevator to the fifth floor.

Inside the room, lying in the bed was Zonica Brown, the girl from the parties. She was his teacher. She was the professional mime. Zonica had her cell in her hands, sitting up, and she motioned for him to get his cell and turn it on.

Confused at first, he finally reached into his cargo pants pocket and pulled out his phone and clicked it on. She was texting him.

As the words came over the screen, Bill could at last look up and cast his hungry eyes upon her beautiful face. It was as if an inner change had taken place, but it was an agonizing and lonely change that slowly overtook his soul and body as he silently read the words. ”I saw you at the party, and I knew you could take my place. I was dying, even then, and I wanted to teach somebody who had the inner talent and feeling for mime that I had. When I saw you perform, I knew. I was born dumb. I created my mime world just as you did. I did it

140 naturally, without a teacher. I mimed because I could not talk to the world in any other way. It was my body that needed to express itself, not my words. Now, as I die, I can die happily. We have a group that performs every year during the holidays in the park. We’re doing Cinderella for the kids, totally in mime. Women play men’s parts and men play the women’s, which is traditional from the Middle Ages. I want you to play Cinderella. You’ll be awesome!”

Bill stared down at the words on his screen, and his eyes filled with tears that overflowed his eyes and ran over his cheeks. It was at that moment he chose to break his vow of silence. He walked over to the bed, took Zonica’s hands into his own and said, “I have no words to thank you. You saved my life. I was going to kill myself after one of my routines at those college parties. It was only a matter of time. Then, you appeared, and I stopped feeling alone and sorry for myself. You taught me to love art and to love physical expression. I just wish,” he sobbed, bringing his head down to press his forehead gently against hers so he could stare into her magical eyes, “I just wish I could have loved you.”

Zonica Brown lived long enough to see Bill portray Cinderella, and she thought it was quite inventive of him to create a character who was obsessed with her cell phone.

In fact, the kids in the audience roared with laughter when Cinderella tried to text the Prince at the Ball, instead of going up to him when he asked her to dance. And when, instead of leaving a glass slipper behind, Cinderella left her cell phone that looked like it was made of glass, the audience appreciated the modern symbolism of that act much more.

Zonica texted back and forth with Bill until the very end.

She had no other family, as she was an orphan. One of her

141 last messages to him was this: “I was abandoned by my mother when I was an infant. Many years later, when I came down with my leukemia, I had to fill out the paperwork, and your mother told me about you and your fascination with mime. She said she was worried about you because you were hiding out at student parties around the campus. Bill, you were my Prince Charming, and I’ll always remember you that way.”

Bill Crowley, Jr., in remembrance, would never put his fingers or thumbs on the keys of a cell phone after that day. He did have a tattoo of a dragon etched into his chest, where it lives to this day, as he silently creates his pantomime universe, alone, and together with his brethren, their wide eyes still watching, surveying the crowds, constantly searching for another Zonica Brown.

142

The Siamese Sammy “Hot Corner” Harmon, an eighty-two-year-old widower and retired baseball great from San Diego, California, was living out his declining years in luxury, perched atop the La Jolla Cove in his 18,000 square feet “Essencia” mansion. With its curved architecture and handhammered copper doors at the entryway, Sammy’s domicile was a fitting place for his final years. His salt water tide pool and built-into-the-hills frame gave Sammy’s body the physical appearance of a big bear, as he stood on his veranda overlooking the wide Pacific below. A bald, stocky, slightly bent figure with a Cardinals baseball cap, shorts and red tee-shirt, Sammy stood next to the railing holding his binoculars, and he could see the protected seals basking down at the Cove’s beach. His Siamese cat, a blue point named Narong, was his only companion, and Sammy believed the cat had supernatural powers as it followed him around his mansion all day long and even into the night.

This belief had occurred after Sammy visited the Buddhist temple up the coast during an especially depressing and rainy week in May. Golf just didn’t please him the way it used to, and Sammy, with only a daughter, Lucille, who was a forty-five-year-old widow living in Mission Valley, wanted something to leave with her when he died. She

143 had a son, Walt, who had been buried in the Padres minor league organization for six years, but he worshipped his grandfather.

Sammy was experiencing chest pain, and his doctor put him on blood thinners and told him he needed to find a way to “unwind.” The golf was too strenuous, and Sammy wasn’t ready to die, so he decided to look into the meditation techniques that he heard the Buddhist monk talk about one time in a small room adjacent to the La Jolla Country Club. Mostly wives of golfers had attended that day, and several were wearing saffron Saris, and there was a little brown guy burning incense and ringing a gong at appropriate intervals during the monk’s speech.

The monk guy was short and wiry like some of the Caribbean and South American players Sammy had played against in the Bigs. However, this was an Asian, from Thailand, and all Sammy knew about Thailand was that they had a very popular food that many of his friends raved about, although Sammy refused to eat anything that “might contain dog.” But, the words from this slant-eyed Buddhist that day hit something deep inside Sammy, and that’s why he made his trip up the road to the Carlsbad monastery one week later.

Sammy had never been a religious guy, although he was superstitious, having never stepped on a chalk line in his twenty-two year career with the St. Louis Cardinals, from 1946 until 1968, and having never failed to eat the same dinner on the nights his team was on a winning streak.

However, this story about the Siamese cat was something that put his superstitious nature on an entirely new level.

144 “When the loved one dies, the cat from my country has a mysterious ability,” the monk was saying, and the little assistant banged the gong. The sound vibrated through Sammy’s body like an eerie tuning fork.

“Our cats take the loved one’s soul! Yes, it’s true! The feline follows the dying one around until he passes beyond this tearful residence, and then the soul will transfer into our cat’s being. That’s when the cat is taken into our monastery to be pampered and shown the most royal treatment we can bestow it.”

Another gong was sounded, and then a large woman who was not wearing a Sari, but a giant business suit and heart-shaped sunglasses, asked, “And, how much does this cost the dying loved one’s relatives?”

“Oh, we do not ask a contribution until the good things start to happen,” said the monk, a small smile playing on his thin lips.

“Good things?” Sammy asked, almost apologetically, as he didn’t even realize it was he that spoke until the words came out of his mouth.

“Yes, you see, the cat keeps the soul of the loved one, and the loved one communicates through the cat. As long as we feed and pamper this medium between our dead ancestors, good things always seem to happen to surviving relatives! Is this not so mysterious?” Another gong, and then the assistant began handing out business cards to all those assembled.

“If you would like to purchase one of our cats, please to visit our monastery, and we will see if you can elicit a connection. If you are chosen by one of our felines, then

145 you will take it home to await the magic moment. We will then bring the Siamese back to our temple to be pampered. And, soon, your loved ones will be given the fruits of positive karma from beyond this life!”

Narong, which in Thai meant “to make war,” was Sammy’s constant shadow around his mansion. Literally, the old man could not even take a shit without the cat at his feet, purring and rubbing up against his legs, climbing inside his underwear, and staring up at him with those vacuous blue orbs. The “points” on a Siamese cat referred to the color on the face, ears, tail, and paws of the animal. You had chocolate point, seal point, and even lilac point, as well as the blue point, which was the breed that was first recognized by the British Government in the 1930s.

The Buddhist monks had made a great ritual out of the cat being the one to “choose” his future master, and when Sammy sat down on the “Buddha throne” inside the “cattery,” Narong had almost immediately come up to him and daintily hopped into his lap. Narong was also crosseyed, which the monks told him was an especially significant sign of good fortune. “The mark of blissful meditation is when one has one’s eyes crossed in contemplation,” said Aroon, the monk who had spoken at the golf club.

Sammy was instructed to allow the cat to go wherever he wished inside the house, as this would allow him to “bond with your spirit.” Then, when the day of the transfer happened, the cat would gather Sammy’s soul into his body and the monks would come to pick him up. It was as simple as that.

Sammy signed all the legal papers, learned a few meditation chants from the monks, and

146 drove back to his La Jolla mansion on the hill, with his “soul gatherer” in tow.

The weeks leading to the final day were filled with Sammy’s daily routine. In the mornings, Sammy got up promptly at 6 AM, took a shower, and then got on the treadmill for a half-hour. He then sank into the salt water tide pool, toweled off, and ate breakfast on the veranda overlooking La Jolla Cove.

His live-in nurse, Phoebe Strong, a 37-year-old former animal trainer for Siegfried and Roy at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas, brought in his breakfast of oatmeal and orange juice and talked to him about world events and, more specifically, about his relationship with his daughter and grandson. They also enjoyed talking about animals, and this morning they talked about Narong and his mystical abilities.

Miss Strong was a good example of her name; she was quite muscular in stature, and she worked out in Sammy’s recreation room each day before she headed for her second job at the San Diego Wild Animal Park. Phoebe was blond and attractive, and she was enamored of Sammy and his baseball history, but she was also quite concerned with his pending journey into the unknown.

“Look, Hottie, I know cats. They’re my specialty,” said Phoebe, buttering a piece of toast for the old man as he looked over the morning’s newspaper headlines. With his tail in a question mark, Narong was enjoying his daily ritual of zooming around the house, climbing curtains, skidding along the waxed tiles, and making a point of leaping onto the breakfast table to knock over the sugar bowl.

147 “Cats get their exercise, don’t they?” said Phoebe. “How can you believe a Siamese has the ability to eat your soul?

Aren’t you a Christian? Don’t you know that animals’ souls are different than people’s souls?”

“All I know is that I am being kept alive by these here pills,” said Sammy, holding up the plastic bottle of blood thinners. “Doc says if I forget to take one, I am one dead cowboy. The way I see it, I now have my life in my own hands. How many folks can say that?”

“Are you nuts? Do you actually believe those monks are going to do your family any good when you’re dead? Why, I’ll bet they turn around and re-sell those cats. Who’s going to check?” Phoebe cleared some toast crumbs from the table with her open hand and whisked them into her palm.

“You’re just a scientific snob. You think animals are to be trained by reward and punishment and that’s it. There’s not a mystical bone in your body, Phoebe,” said Sammy, swigging down the last dregs of his coffee. As if on cue, Narong leapt upon the table and began to lick up the residual margarine left on the plates.

“This cat sees into my soul, Phoebe,” said Sammy, cupping his two, meaty hands against the cat’s bluish face, and Narong immediately began to purr and to stare, crosseyed, into his beloved master’s hazel eyes.

Later that day, as Sammy walked around the house, he kept clenching and playing with the plastic container of pills inside his shorts pocket. He always wore his old Cardinals’ baseball cap, from the 1950s, as it had been signed by every member of the team: Musial, Flood, and

148 Schoendienst were there, along with all the others, and Sammy enjoyed knowing he could always touch the bill of his cap to connect with them. He had spent many glorious and inglorious days and nights with these men, and, if he had a soul, Sammy imagined they were locked up inside it also. “In fact,” Aroon had said, “you have lived many more lives than this one. All of what you were before travels with you into a new life, and all that you are today will go with you tomorrow.”

Sammy’s meditations became more frequent now that he knew he controlled when and where he would die. As he stood on the veranda overlooking the Pacific, Sammy tried hard to think about what he had experienced in the lives he lived before this one.

It was crazy, but Sammy believed he had once been St. Christopher, the big man who carried on his shoulders the young boy, Jesus of Nazareth, across the Jordan River. Of course, Sammy knew the Catholic Church had declared that St. Christopher was just a legend, and had never really existed, but Sammy was certain he had been this saint in another lifetime.

The St. Christopher fantasy filled his consciousness as he gazed out at the ocean. He could feel the young Jesus on his shoulders as he trudged along the bottom of the river.

Through Jesus, Sammy felt the weight of the entire world and its collection of sins, past, present and future, and the task therefore became a heroic one because Sammy was the patron saint of travelers everywhere. Sammy felt the church could go to hell. He had been raised a Catholic, until he met his wife, Emily, who was a Buddhist.

Today, as St. Christopher, he would carry the weight of the world into his next life. This previous saintly existence

149 explained to Sammy why he had often felt the weight of mankind’s troubles out at the “hot corner” of the baseball diamond, where line drives sped toward him like bullets, and often it took a millisecond’s reaction to spear the ball in the glove or to duck out of the way.

Like St. Christopher, Sammy believed he carried redemption on his shoulders.

He believed he was his team’s good luck charm, and when they went to the World Series, many teammates believed this also, and they would rub his balding head each time they took the field. They called it “Sammy’s Whammy,” and it was supposed to put a hex on the opposing team.

During the week before Sammy passed into the next world, his daughter and grandson paid him a final visit.

Sammy had arranged that they come because he wanted to explain to them what he was doing. It was the offseason for Walt, who was playing for the Padres Class A team, the Lake Elsinore Storm. Walt was now 25, and he was getting quite old by baseball standards. On the day he came to visit his grandfather, Walt wore jeans and a Spring Training jersey. The cap of the Storm had two eyes on the crown that glared out at you, and Sammy always thought it looked ridiculous. “Haven’t you ever heard of the eyes of the storm?” Walt would ask, but Sammy just shook his head. “In my day, we had normal names for teams and mascots. Now you’ve got storms, earthquakes, tsunamis. What’s next? Venereal diseases? How about the San Diego Syphilis? The Kansas City Clap?”

“Dad! You needn’t be so crude,” said Lucille, who was the regular church-going member of the family. She was also a nurse at San Diego’s Mercy Hospital, and Sammy knew that he would have to be careful how he chose his words about the cat and his own future demise.

150 Sammy brought his family into the den, where he had all his baseball memorabilia: trophies, rings, photos and autographed balls, bats and gloves. His wife, Emily, who died in 1968 of cervical cancer, the year Sammy retired, used to call this room his “karmic heaven.” It was his dear Emily who had instructed him about the ways of the Eastern religions, as she had a degree in World Religions from St. Louis University. He hadn’t paid much attention when she was alive, however, and when she died she told Sammy that she was thinking about what she was going to be in her next life. “I think I’ll be close to you, Sam,” she had said, and her eyes became suddenly alive, the way he always remembered them, blue like the Bahamian waters off Nassau, where they had spent their honeymoon.

“I asked you here to tell you that when I’m gone you will get this house and everything I own,” said Sammy, folding his big hands across his knees. Narong was in his lap, and Sammy could feel him purring against his stomach like a living engine.

“Oh, you don’t have to talk about that,” said Lucille, who was always uncomfortable when the subject of death came up. After all, that’s why the Catholic Church had all those sacraments to protect people like his daughter from the Grim Reaper and guarantee them an eternal Paradise.

“No, I do have to talk about it,” said Sammy. “And that’s not all. You’re also going to have some good luck coming your way. Let’s just say it will be my way of carrying you across rough waters.”

Sammy thought he was being ingenious by metaphorically getting the St. Christopher legend into his story.

151 “If you stay healthy and take your medication, then there’s no reason you won’t live many more years. I talked to Dr. Samson, and he told me,” said Lucille, beginning to bite her nails the way she had for years. He and Emily had tried everything to get her out of the habit when she was a girl but nothing had worked. All of her nails were bitten down to jagged semicircles.

“Sure, anything you say, Grandpa,” said Walt, standing up and walking around the room to look at all the baseball stuff. Walt had been diagnosed as having Attention Deficit Disorder, and Sammy told his daughter she shouldn’t give the kid any pills for it. “It’s going to take away his playing edge. He won’t be able to compete with any spark,” Sammy had pointed out. However, Lucille refused, and Walt regularly took Ritalin, and Sammy secretly believed this was the reason why his grandson was still playing at the minor league level. Walt played third base, like his grandfather, but he repeatedly batted in the low .200s, and he had very little power in his swing.

“Just remember what I told you,” said Sammy, and he stood up to escort them out. Narong ran along with them, crying like an infant, and threatening to escape out of the front door if they didn’t watch out. Sammy said his goodbyes and, as he hugged and kissed them both, he tried to pass on some of the positive energy he believed was gathering somewhere deep inside his being.

On the day Sammy stopped taking his pills, it was raining outside. Down at La Jolla Cove, Sammy could still see the seals basking themselves on their protected beach, and he knew it was time. Narong was lying at his feet when the pain came. It came quickly, like a line drive off the bat of Mickey Mantle, and it shot up his arm and into his brain,

152 where it exploded, and Sammy thought it was like the energy that came when a universe was born in the cosmos. “Just like String Theory Physics,” he thought, just before the darkness overtook his perception. The last thing the old man heard was Narong’s mournful cry, as the cat was getting ready to leap into Sammy’s lap and engulf his spirit. Narong, the warrior, was ready to do battle with the source of good and evil, and the long, blue-point feline knew that his purpose was sheltered deep inside his master’s being. *** Aroon had to get the police to show Phoebe that he had the proper legal documents to pick-up Narong from Sammy’s mansion.

The monk, throughout all of the commotion, was quite subdued, and a slight smile played on his thin lips.

Phoebe, on the other hand, began screaming about what a “crock of shit” their temple was and that she was going to check-up on the cat to see they didn’t re-sell it.

“Please, Miss Phoebe, come and visit Narong. He will now be in his proper place. We are going to take good care of him, for he is now bearing a precious host,” Aroon said, in a sing-song voice.

The two cops—one man and one woman--looked at each other and raised their eyebrows. “What about the body?

We need somebody to sign the paperwork so we can send the body to the mortuary.”

“I’ll call his sister,” said Phoebe, “she’s going to want to know all about this cat business.”

153 When Lucille learned that Sammy had died and Narong had been taken to the Buddhist temple in Carlsbad, she met with Phoebe to find out what had happened to her father. They met at a Denny’s and Phoebe told Lucille that Sammy believed Narong now held his soul inside him and that the monks were treating the cat like royalty because Sammy had paid them thousands of dollars.

“Can you believe it?” said Phoebe, biting into her veggieburger. Between chews, she added, “I think you might be able to sue them. They played on your father’s emotions big time. Your mother was a Buddhist, and this whole thing with the cat happened because he was thinking about Emily.”

“Yes, you may have something there,” said Lucille, sipping at an iced tea with a sprig of mint leaf floating in it. “When my mother died, Sammy quit baseball, bought that mansion and became a virtual recluse. I was worried about his mental health a long time before he ever visited that temple.”

The two women agreed to talk to a lawyer about their problem and to meet next week. They both didn’t like the idea of that Buddhist temple getting so much of Sammy’s estate money, especially if it was all a swindle.

Meanwhile, inside the temple, the monks were, indeed, treating Narong and the other Siamese like royalty. They were fed tuna on gold plates, and they slept on silk pillows.

Each day, promptly at noon and at midnight, Aroon held meditations inside the cattery, and the felines would begin to cry like infants, a special way that Siamese cats have, and their inner spirits would howl out into the world of

154 humanity, into the world of sorrow and suffering, and where their prayers landed, nobody knew.

Lucille and Phoebe were successful at getting a restraining order filed on the Buddhist temple, and the court ordered that Narong be picked up by a city animal shelter to be impounded until the case could come to trial.

However, just as the shelter’s animal control officer bent over to pick Narong up, the cat hissed and leapt between the woman’s legs and ran out of the temple and into the California sunshine. Nobody saw where the cat ran off to, and Aroon told the animal shelter official, “It is karma.

The cat is holding the living spirit of Mister Harmon, and only fate will determine its destiny.”

About the same time Narong escaped, Walt, playing third base for the Lake Elsinore Storm, began to hit. His first hit was a long, towering home run over the centerfield scoreboard. It was one of the longest homers ever hit in the Storm’s stadium, and it began a hitting streak of what became twenty-seven games for young Walt. However, not only was the grandson of Sammy Harmon hitting, he was also fielding every ball that was hit at him. He scooped up scorching, grass-cutting grounders and rifleshot line drives; he dove to his right to save balls hit down the left field line, and he dove to his left to snare shots that would have normally been handled by the shortstop.

Walt’s range playing in the field was what one sportswriter called “cat-like.”

As his average began to climb, from .205 to .375, the Padres front office began to notice.

Soon, Walt was packing his bags and heading for Portland, the Triple-A team’s home town. By mid-April, Walt was hitting over .

155 400 and had 23 home runs, and the San Diego Padres regular third baseman, Jerome Ellis, had been put out of commission with a pulled hamstring. That’s when Walt got his “call” to come up to the Show.

On the night he got the phone call from the Padres front office, Walt was in the Mission Valley condo of his mother, Lucille. Just before the phone rang, there was a scratching at the front door. When Lucille opened it, in sprang Narong, looking no worse for wear for having been missing over a year and the case against the Buddhists having been dropped for lack of substantial evidence.

“Heavens!” screamed Lucille, and she tried to grab the cat, but Narong was in a manic state, and he began to tear around the room like a blue-tipped tornado. At the peak of Narong’s commotion, as both woman and cat were screaming their loudest, Walt’s cell phone rang, and he answered what would prove to be the call that changed his entire life to come.

Walt was as superstitious as his grandfather had been, so Narong became a team mascot. In a small cage, sitting right beside the dugout steps, Narong held court with the human athletes. As each one would go out to get into the on-deck circle, he would rub Narong’s head for good luck.

This ritual would also be repeated whenever they came in from the playing field. Walt told his teammates that his grandpa’s spirit was inside the cat, and nobody on the team seemed to doubt it. In baseball, superstitions come in all varieties and the story of Narong, Walt and “Hot Corner’s Ghost” traveled up and down the baseball circuit in both leagues, for years to come, and it soon became legend. Walt picked up the MVP Award for his play on the

156 Padres the following year and Lucille even began to believe.

One night, as mother and son stood Essencia mansion, gazing down at Cove, Lucille asked Walter, “Do medication?” Narong began to wind legs and purr.

on the veranda of the the lights of La Jolla you still take your his way between their

“Funny thing. I was inside the clubhouse one day before a game, and just as I was about to pop one, Narong took one of his flying leaps and knocked the bottle out of my hand. I never took one after that,” said Walt, and he gave his mother a hug.

“I guess you’ve got Dad’s edge,” said Lucille, and she stooped down to feel the soft and delicate fur of her father’s notorious and magical cat.

157

Singing Angel of the Rumspringa Be not conformed to this world. Joshua Warren’s sixteenth birthday was celebrated with these words, as the bishop, Holland Jessup, came around to the Warren’s farm and blessed Joshua before he left for his train trip across America. The good bishop, having shared with the family a big dinner of fried chicken, potatoes, gravy and fresh vegetables, proclaimed this statement as he put his large, reddish and freckled hand on top of Joshua’s head, with the rest of the ten members of his family standing around him in a circle. They looked at him with admiration and love.

Joshua had enough money to live on his own for about a month. His mother had also packed him sufficient food to eat on his own and not pay the high prices aboard the train. As his father and mother drove him by buggy to Lancaster, their son stared down at the train tickets in his lap as if they were keys to some exotic land. Even the names of the trains he was going to ride held a mystical importance to his adolescent consciousness. He was riding the “Pennsylvanian” from Lancaster to Pittsburgh, the “Capitol Limited” from Pittsburgh to Chicago, and, finally, the “Southwest Chief,” on his long journey across the country to Los Angeles. Even though he knew his entire life was already established in his family and in his community, something inside Joshua made him expectant for what was going to happen on this trip.

His father and mother said little when they left him off at the Amtrak station in Lancaster. It was almost as if they

158 were shunning him, or meidung, as it was called when an Amish member disobeyed the Ordnung, the strict code of behavior to help its community live a godly life. As he stepped onto the train’s coach car, Joshua looked back one more time, and his parents just stood at the platform, his father’s straw hat and beard waving in the breeze, and his mother’s white bonnet flapping against her face. They did not wave like the English; they stood rigid and unmoving, like figures from the Nineteenth Century, when they made a conscious decision to keep themselves separate from the world and its so-called “progress.” To his parents and all the others of the “plain people,” this growth meant nationalistic wars of aggression, disharmony with Nature, and a mass media that sold sin and selfishness as products of despair.

Once, when a college student had stopped his father on the street in Lancaster, telling him he was doing a research paper about the Amish, his father had replied to a question about why their community did not have television by saying, “Television is the sewer line that connects you directly to the cesspool of Hollywood.” Joshua had once watched a television that was playing inside a Lancaster store window, and he saw a nearly naked woman strutting on a stage with lights shining on her and an audience of screaming English waving their bodies and clapping their hands above their heads; obviously, they were all in some kind of hysterical fit over this woman’s incantation. Joshua had asked his father, “Is that Hollywood?” His father had simply tugged at the front of his straw hat and nodded silently.

Joshua’s trip aboard the train was uneventful until he got aboard the Southwest Chief in Chicago. He had eaten by himself in the lounge car, as he viewed the passing scenery and thought about his family back home. He longed for the communion with the earth, as he, his three

159 older brothers and his father tilled the soil by horse-drawn plows, never speaking, just smiling at each other as the sun passed slowly overhead and the pungent smell of fresh soil drifted up into their moving souls and bodies, creating a harmony that made one whole and complete in a way that nothing in the English world could come close to duplicating. Joshua also yearned for the gentle stories around the fireplace, as his mother read from the Bible and explained why they were the way they were.

However, when Joshua stepped aboard the Chief, he knew something had radically changed in his life. It was as if he had stepped into a different dimension or even onto a different planet. There were groups of young athletes who were trying out for the world Olympics in Los Angeles, and they were a collection of English that Joshua had never seen before. Instead of the usual junk food and electronic distractions, these young people seemed focused and vibrant, walking with calm assurance from car to car, spontaneously doing elaborate exercises and even poised balancing stretches that looked somehow exotic and strangely attractive to Joshua. In fact, as he walked down the middle aisles of the train’s cars, Joshua often tried to mimic them, but he would fall over and hit his muscular, yet bulky farmer’s body against the cabin walls.

He soon began talking to these athletes, and they told him exciting stories of competitions held in many different countries and the exultation of winning before thousands of people. The leaping pole vaulter, who had long blonde hair and a radiant smile, described how he earned his spot on the team by beating his own world record, pushing down on his long, fiberglass pole, as his protracted and lean body formed a perfect “L” as it was catapulted into the air, up and over the bar, the arch of his form snaking above and around this bar and clearing the top of it by a

160 fraction of an inch. “Imagine trying to get over a razor blade that will cut you in two. That’s how I do it. My imagination creates the adrenaline I need to get over that bar,” said the youth, gazing into his bottle of green tea.

These athletes also told Joshua about how they had been given expensive scholarships to universities around the United States, and some of them were even going to be paid for doing commercials as they endorsed products.

The kinds of studies and the amounts of money mesmerized Joshua, as they contrasted sharply with all he was ever taught in his Amish community. This was a world that had not been described to him by his parents or the other members. It was a world that appealed to Joshua’s innate sense of adventure and a growing interest in the quest for knowledge. As his own education had ended at fourteen years, the subjects and majors that the young athletes told him about were quite strange and provocative to his young mind. The sprinter told him about the cloning of Dolly the sheep and stem cell research, and Joshua’s jaw dropped. The swimmer told him about the Internet and how people sold goods and services at the click of a button, and his mind raced with possibilities, both for himself and for his community back home.

However, on the second day of his trip, as their train passed through New Mexico, Joshua first met Adrienne.

She was all alone, sitting in a corner booth of the viewing car, reading a book. He saw the title, The Idiot by a fellow oddly named Feodor Dostoyevsky. Adrienne was wearing black leotards, a matching beret, and a plaid vest and skirt. On her feet were Indian moccasins. Her chest was full of beads, and her fingers and toes were studded with a variety of turquoise rings and tortoise shell amulets. But her body was the most captivating figure Joshua had ever seen. Most of the Amish girls were plump, spectacled and

161 reserved, with plastered-down hair that was rolled into a bun and stuffed under a bonnet. However, Adrienne’s hair was radiant, long and red, and it snaked down her back in tendrils of rusty softness. Her breasts pressed against her vest like ripe cantaloupe, and her legs, tucked luxuriously under her bottom, were long and sinewy.

Joshua sat down across from her and stared. It was all he could do. When she finally looked up from her book to see him, he felt a magnetic connection when her hazel eyes fastened upon his brown ones. “Oh, another one of the farm boys from Amityville. Goat got your tongue? Or are you just a little horny from one of those journeys you all make to the devil’s playground?”

Joshua didn’t quite know what to make of what this girl just said to him. He squirmed a bit in his seat before he said, “I’m sorry. I don’t understand you. Devil’s playground? Is this place in Hollywood?”

“Listen, I know about you folks. Your elders let you escape the cult for a little while, and you think our world is sinful and decadent. So, you end up drunk on your asses, fucking your brains out in some barn hoe-down. Am I right? It’s your only shot at freedom. Such a deal. The name’s Adrienne. Adrienne Colton. I’m a hairy Semite from Brooklyn in New York City. Dad’s a defense attorney; Mom’s a professor of literature at NYU. I’m headed to Portland State University in Oregon. I’m enrolled in their opera program.”

“Did you say ‘hairy Semite’?” Joshua asked. “Isn’t that a monkey?”

“No, it means I’m Jewish, but I do happen to believe in Evolution. Sorry if it offends your biblical beliefs,” she said, raising her book up to read again.

162 “Are you a Jewish Christian?” he asked.

She stared over the top of her book at him. “No, I’m afraid I’m just one of the regular plain old Jews. Thanks for asking, however. Oh, and by the way, the reason I said all that about the devil’s playground was because I recently went with one of your Amish farmer boys to a party he was having outside Lancaster in his own private mobile home.”

“Really? A party?” Joshua sat up a little in his seat.

“Seems he had the whole wine, women and song thing going for him out there beside his daddy’s farm. He told me they didn’t even know he had parties out there with a case of beer in the fridge, Sony Playstation on the tube and Tupac Shakur, who was rapping on his stereo DVD about gangs in the inner cities. I left when they started chasing after the pigs. It’s an old Jewish superstition, you know? Besides, I read Orwell’s Animal Farm, and I haven’t liked pigs since.”

When she didn’t see a smile on Joshua’s face, she continued, “I didn’t really take you for one of those party animals. You look like you’re seriously trying to find yourself, am I correct?” She put her book down, and there were those hazel eyes again.

Joshua took a deep breath before he spoke to her. “I am looking for something. I’m afraid I don’t know literature, and I don’t know what opera is, and I don’t know so many things in your world. However, I am willing to learn. That is, if you think you can teach me.”

Adrienne smiled. “You’re dead serious, aren’t you? Well, maybe I could teach you better if I knew your name.”

163 “Oh. I’m so sorry! Joshua. Joshua Warren, from Lancaster, in the state of Pennsylvania,” he said, and when she took his hands into her warm ones, his sixteen-yearold heart took flight. *** Unlike the prince in the book Adrienne was reading that day on the train, Joshua Warren did not come from royalty, Russian or otherwise. Indeed, his family of Amish farmers extended back to the 1800s, when the first Mennonites and Anabaptists came over from Germany and Russia to seek freedom in this new land of America. Much in the way they treated the Jews, the Germans and Russians did not care for the religious people who thought the state was just a ploy to use the people’s lives for their own selfish interests. And so, as Adrienne explained the German culture to Joshua, he soon came to understand that he had a lot in common with her and her people.

They had both been persecuted in Germany and in Russia, and they would have, no doubt, been in the same concentration camps to be exterminated by Hitler’s Final Solution. Adrienne explained that the Jews also now had a land of their own, in Israel, and they had also begun their history as socialist farmers, but now they had to protect themselves from the invading Arab warriors who surrounded them. These warriors of Allah were willing to blow themselves up to kill innocent Jewish school children, and they were also the ones who could fly passenger jets into tall buildings to prove a point about their insane religious fanaticism. Even as a pacifist, Joshua understood this.

Instead of traveling to Los Angeles, Joshua took the train with eighteen-year-old Adrienne Colton up to Portland in the state of Oregon. On the way, she educated him about

164 the ways of her world, and the world of the English. “See, Josh, I am not one of the English either. I, too, feel like I’m an outsider most of the time. And now, as I try to become an artist and a singer, I feel estranged from my own family as well. My parents believe the only successful occupations are in medicine or in law. That’s my heritage.”

Joshua smiled at her and said, “See, that’s why we’re both here on this train. I need you and you need me.”

“How so?” Adrienne asked with some candor in her voice.

“I need to find the inner peace that you speak of when you discuss literature and music. It’s the one thing missing from my community back home. We are told to shun our inner world and that only hard work in the soil can bring us redemption. They keep telling us that Jesus was a hard-working carpenter who suffered for the sins of mankind. He had no time to feel sorry for Himself,” said Joshua, as they sat next to each other in Adrienne’s sleeper cabin and gazed up at the billions of stars in the sky, as the train sped its way through the midnight desert plains. *** As it turned out, Adrienne was not automatically accepted into her opera program at Portland State. Instead, she needed to pass a try-out in front of the professors in the Music Department, and not all candidates were accepted.

Even though Adrienne had a trained, gifted soprano voice, she was quite fearful on that day, and it was her new friend Joshua who came to her assistance.

“Come on in with me, Josh.

You’ll be my good luck

165 charm,” she told him, pulling him by his purple shirt. He wore the Amish outfit of straw hat, purple, long-sleeved shirt, and black boots with braces and brown, corduroy trousers. He told her they would laugh at him and that this would hurt her chances, but she refused to take no for an answer, and she grabbed him by the coat and pulled him.

Inside the concert hall, the long table in front of the stage held the opera professors of Portland State. These teachers were opera stars in their own right, and they all knew prospective talent when they heard it, and they all knew who could stand the sharp scrutiny that professional opera required. As Adrienne Colton strode before them with the gangly farmer boy in tow, they did not quite know what was happening, but their interest was piqued, nonetheless. It wasn’t exactly Puccini, but it was close to it.

That evening, Adrienne sang the most difficult aria in Mozart’s opera, The Magic Flute. Queen of the Night's "Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen" ("The vengeance of hell boils in my heart"), which reaches a high F6 note, is probably the most difficult to sing for a young soprano, but as she lifted her voice to reach this lofty note, Adrienne smiled over at Joshua, and his heart began to melt into Oregon’s Germanic night. He knew at once that this young woman had brought him inner peace at last and that his world back home would forever be changed for the better.

And thus, ten years following that night’s audition, Josh Warren was once more working alongside his brothers in the fields of his traditional Amish heritage. Yet, from the small, portable radio, sitting on top of the buggy seat nearby, sang the voice of Adrienne Colton, the newest

166 member of New York City’s Metropolitan Opera. As they plowed the rows for corn, only Joshua knew that it was Puccini, and only Joshua knew he and Adrienne shared a common suffering and a common joy for the world of art and humanity.

As he trudged along the furrows of hard earth, making the rows fertile and ready for birth once more, Joshua hoped he could one day call on Adrienne at her place of worship and she would come racing to him, and he would take her to his secret barn that he built during the winter after he met her. Inside, he would show her the rows of books he had collected, and she then could teach him what each one meant. He did not need more than this. This was the inner world he nurtured, and she provided the key in her letters to him. He would listen to her sing, as the sun set on his private barn, the color of red like her hair, and they would make love in the new-mown hay. She was, as he told her on the night she sang her way into the music department of Portland State, the “singing angel of his rumspringa.” To Joshua, the bold and the brave warrior, the prince who blew down the walls of Jericho with his horn and not his gun, he was now a changed and happy man.

167

Fireman Remember 2003, when we had all those wildfires in California? All those people being evacuated and all those homes burning to the ground caused quite a political stir.

Dude, in San Diego, where I come from, most folks say we’re just Texas with a beach. As a surfer, I know what that means. It means when I go out to catch a set with my bros, we sometimes get sick because of the pollution.

The politicians don’t want to spend the money to fix the storm drain systems, and they really don’t want to pay for much of anything in the way of public service. Shit, man, this is the city where they were so paranoid they thought putting fluoride in the water was a Communist conspiracy!

If you didn’t live here during the fires, you might have thought there was just panic and people helping each other to survive. People watching TV saw that there were more volunteers helping at evacuation sites than there were evacuees. That’s not the big part of it. There were also some people who made a lot of money off those fires.

“Just think about it.” That’s what this dude told me one night when he was visiting me in my cottage on the beach in Del Mar. You see, I have politics in my veins, as my father was the mayor of San Diego for two years. The problem came when my father began taking illegal cash from local developers to fund his campaign. There were

168 some honest people in City Hall back then, and my old man lost his job. Times change, however, and when the Republicans took over in Washington, my old man was back in business. Only this time, he was working on something much more profitable.

So, this dude who was working for my dad came out to see me, after the first wildfires struck in 2003, to make a business proposal. It was totally awesome the way he rationalized the whole thing, and I could see why he was working for the old man. I can be a pretty cordial dude when I want to be. The beer was imported. This guy was like most of the other sleazy dirt bags my dad brought home. He had the marine haircut from the Nixon era, the bags under the eyes, the paunch at the belt, and he sucked down four beers to my one in the time he took to give me his spiel.

“Look at it this way, Stuart,” he said, sipping on his beer.

“This is the computer age. We have now spent a ton of money on computerized communication equipment. Now that the Feds have access to everybody’s personal information, we can put all these jokers into one huge data base. And, it’s all legal because Congress approved it!

This is where the fun part begins. We can evacuate people like clockwork—it’s called reverse 911.”

Fun? I wondered if the asshole got off watching kittens drown.

“Your Dad, bless his soul, has his own radio talk show, and most San Diegans believe every word he says. They think he was screwed over by the City, and he plays them like a fiddle. Listen to this. When the fires start this time, guess what your old man is going to tell the populace? C’mon, just guess.”

169 “That extraterrestrials started them?” I told him, knowing that we had a large contingent of folks in San Diego who really believe they can make contact with egg-headed Martians.

“Pretty close. He’s gonna tell them the terrorists started them. At least, he’s going to provide sufficient proof from our guys in Washington to make them scratch their heads and get worried. You see, we’re going to make money off the fear factor. Insurance sells fear, our politicians sell fear, and that’s exactly the way we’re going to make our ton of profit. People will be so afraid they will forget to check on who is really making out in this next big firestorm.”

“I don’t understand. How is there going to be profit from people’s misfortune?” And I honestly didn’t understand at that point.

“Well, as your dad puts it, you must first have your ducks in a row. The first duck is the gas and electric company.

Remember last time? They tried to charge San Diegans for the money they lost on the power outages and other destruction. Didn’t happen. They were, in fact, forced to give a refund to all their customers. The goody-goods in Sacramento saw to that. This time, our duck will not get shot down. Instead, we’ll see to it that SDG&E can claim it was an act of God or an act of war that destroyed their equipment and started the fire. That way, our first duck will be able to get paid by the State and also by the Feds.

And that’s not quackers, by the way, that’s cold cash.

Besides, many of these customers can’t even pay their bills, but the State sure can!”

“That sounds cool,” I said, “but who are the other ducks?”

170 “Insurance companies—quack!

Firemen—quack, quack!

Relief Agencies—quack, quack, quack! And the biggest duck of all, the developers—quack, quack, quack, quack!

They’ll all be raking in the dough. Hell, there was even one poor fireman that tried to set a fire on his own because he knew that was the only way he was gonna get overtime from those cheap bastards! They hired more felons in prison than they did trained firemen. That brings me to your part in this beautiful operation.”

“As a felon or a trained fireman?” I asked, trying to stay witty despite the depressing conversation.

“Ha! Felon. You’re a card, just like your old man. You’re just gonna set a few blazes, that’s all. And, we need you to drop a few clues at the scene.”

“Clues? Blazes? Are you saying you want me to commit arson?”

“Look, kid, it’s not as scary as you’re making it out to be.

We’ll already have the main fires going by then, and you’ll just be setting little fires to keep the media and the folks at home wondering, that’s all. We need the distraction and we need the link with the terrorists.

You’ll be providing both. Without you, all our ducks will become sitting ducks, if you can follow me.” He chuckled at his own joke, and I felt acid forming a pool in the pit of my stomach.

“What pot of gold is there at the end of the fire rainbow?

For me, that is.”

“Hey, glad you asked! All the ducks will get rich. And the rich just get richer, isn’t that the American way? Besides, the folks we’re going after can afford the insurance.

They’ll be having cheese and wine parties and planning

171 their new homes—bigger and better than the last ones.

And, you’ll be the glue that holds this plan together.”

“Yeah, but when the Jaguars and BMWs are pulling away from the flames, what about the dude who can’t afford the insurance? Last time I checked, most Americans can’t even afford insurance. Hey, and what about the Mexicans who work for these rich folks? I don’t think they’ll have room in their SUVs for them, will they?”

“You sound just like a politician. What we have in America right now is survival of the fittest. You can be with the lions or with the sheep. Your dad and I want you to run with the lions.”

“Sounds a lot like wolves, to me,” I said.

“Look, kid. There’s not much choice here. You now know the plan, see? And, we just can’t afford for you not to be part of the action. Long story short, you’re in whether you want to be or not.”

The big bastard stood up and belched. I knew my father’s friends meant business in the worst way. I have seen them get revenge over the years, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. A body dropped in the bay. An unmarked car driven over Sunset Cliffs. Some dude found in a hotel room with his throat slit or hung like a prize ham inside the bathroom.

So, I shook his hand, and my fate was sealed, so to speak.

A new era had begun, and I was part of it. *** I set my fires at night. Just as they had told me, the big fires were not being blamed on arson or other malicious acts. Instead, the firemen and the gas company got

172 together and rigged a little “accident” during the Santa Ana conditions that come, like clockwork, during the months of September and October in San Diego. What with Global Warming, the conditions are very ripe for fire. The main fire began in Romona, and then there were others up and down the coast of California. At the biggest part of the conflagration, there were eight major fires roaring out of control. Thousands of acres of land and thousands of homes and business structures were being devoured, and now it was time for me to get into the show.

The first fire I set was in San Ysidro, down near the border. The clues I left were tagging signs left on a tree or a fence. Allahu, Akbar! Which, in Arabic, means “God is the greatest.” Wouldn’t you know it? They arrested a bunch of high school kids who were hanging out in the general area. They said the kids had gotten out of school because of the fires, so they thought they could ensure more time off.

The second fire I set was in Crest Canyon east of Del Mar. San Diego is a unique city.

It has no county fire department.

Therefore, the only engines and fire personnel that exist are determined by what each little town or community can afford. Believe it or not, the rich bastards are just as cheap as the poor bastards. Del Mar has one fire station, and it’s located all the way over at the fairgrounds on Jimmy Durante Boulevard. I, therefore, figured I could shoot the curl in the canyons without being seen. I used the old Zippo lighter my dad had from his days in the Navy as an ace fighter pilot. He was Top Gun material, no shit, and his Top Gun School lighter gave me some courage. I brought some rag head scarves to throw around the place, and I even left a copy of the Koran at each blaze. The fires picked up immediately, and I could feel the heat as the wind started blowing through the

173 canyon. I started running up the canyon, but the wind became so strong that the flames started roaring up after me. I soon saw that I was not the only one in danger.

There were dozens of cardboard box shacks down in the valley, and, all at once, I could see that the fire was also headed straight for them. The rich bastards on the hills above hired these illegals to work in their houses and take care of their gigantic yards. I couldn’t stand seeing these people becoming crispy critters, so I ran down the canyon to warn them. I kept on the outer edge of my fire, and I finally reached the shacks. Men and women began to scream and gather all kinds of shit together. I told them, “Cáigalo, nosotros tienen que salir de aquí ahora!” I had picked up a lot of Spanish surfing up and down the coast of Baja. We had to get out of there pronto.

Maybe twenty-five of us were able to escape. The rest could be heard screaming down in the valley as we stood from above on the crest, looking down into the darkness at the billowing, orange, yellow and red flames. They told me there were kids down there, and that’s when I had my awakening. Maybe I was just a surf bum and a San Diego State dropout, but I was not going to be part of murder. *** I met the creep again at a bar in the La Jolla Inn. He was all excited and shit and motioned for us to go to a private booth in the back. I ordered a beer, and he guzzled at his.

“Stuart, my boy! Your little fire in the valley has been picked up by the mainstream media. Not only did they find the Arab shit, but now they want to blame the illegals.

That’s two birds, as they say, and everybody is very pleased with your work. Your dad is getting callers who are hot as hornets.

They want the INS at all the

174 evacuation centers to pick these people up. They also want the Homeland Security people to get involved.”

“Cool,” I said, trying to look enthused. “When do I get my check?”

“Yeah, well, you just come out to this address tonight,” he said and pushed a slip of paper toward me on the wet table. “All the main players will be there to congratulate you. They want to make this whole deal a seasonal thing.

We’ve got the go-ahead from all the big boys.”

I drove out to the La Costa Country Club in my little VW. My new friends followed me. I had taught them all they would need to know, and I was not going into this pit of vipers alone.

The players had reserved two suites on the top floor of the hotel. This hotel was known for all the gangsters who played golf and did business in California. It was no secret. While their women got their nails and their bodies mudded up in the passion pits, they drank Scotch and made deals while shooting a round or two on the excellent golf course. They even had a pro-am tourney there to make the media believe that La Costa was totally legitimate. And, for the most part, it was. Just like every other place in America these days.

There was probably every crooked California politician and state employee in that room that day. I had quite an audience. They all circled around with drinks, shaking hands and smoking big cigars, and then the head honcho tapped his pen on his glass.

“Men, I want to introduce you to Stuart Hancock. I’m certain you all know Stuart’s father, Richard, former San Diego mayor. Stuart has put our endeavor in motion, and

175 he deserves a round of applause.” I recognized this dude.

He was the Administrative Assistant to the Governor of California, Barry Newburg.

They all clapped, and I felt warm and cozy. Now it was time for my little surprise. I opened the door to the suite and five Mexican nationals entered the room. They were a small contingent from the ones who lived in the valley where my fire began.

“Why, what have we here, Stuart?” asked Barry, obviously a bit shaken. “Are these the noble firefighters from Baja who came to our rescue? If so, I want to shake each of their hands!”

“No, sir, I’m afraid these are the noble illegals who do the shit work for all you rich bastards up on the hill. They’re here to tell you they are going to testify to the police about how you burned down their shanty town and killed their women and children.”

There were several curses and a few shouts from the gathered throng of criminals. Barry and my father’s goony friend stepped toward me. “What’s this all about, Stuart?

Do you know what this means? You’re dead meat!”

“Not so fast,” I said. “It’s my turn to call the shots. If you guys don’t stop the fire business, I’m going to escort these men personally down to the FBI offices on Broadway. I am willing to do my time just to see you all get shafted.”

Several of the men formed a huddle around Newburg and they conferred in passionate whispers. Barry finally turned around to face me. “All right, Hancock. You have us in a compromised position. We will stop our little venture, but we want you to promise to never mention what you’ve heard about this to anyone—ever—is that clear?”

176 “Sure, you don’t think I relish doing time in one of the Governor’s prisons, do you? I hear the surf’s really bad in there.”

“Okay, now get the hell out of here!” said Newburg, and I and my friends left the room. *** One day, before I went surfing with my bros, I decided to pay a visit to my dad at his studio. He was behind the desk, all the communications gear whirring around him, and the callers were just as conservative as they ever were.

He wasn’t talking about terrorists and illegals starting fires.

He was discussing how he and his congressman buddy had gotten the Feds to finally release the helos and converted cargo planes from Miramar and Camp Pendleton, so they could fight the fires. “It’s all about getting through the political red tape!” my dad shouted into his mike. “That’s why I’m here for you all. We can’t let them screw us around, now can we?”

As he turned in his chair, he saw me standing outside the glass, and he gave me the thumbs-up.

He was still vigorous, tall and muscular, but there were spider veins in his cheeks from his alcohol and there were those bags under the eyes, the mark of a true workaholic. I gave him thumbs-down and then a peace sign, and he shook his balding head, and I just left him to his business so I could once again plunge my body into the baptismal home of us all—the magnificent California ocean.

177

Labyrinth Trudi sits on the outside patio table, holding the cell to her ear, her sandaled feet on the bench. Her hair is short and blonde, and she has just turned thirty-nine.

She is wearing shorts and a halter top. She has a tattoo on the bicep of each arm. “Armando” is on one bicep, which is the name of her ex-husband, and “Speed kills,” is on the other, which she got done by another inmate, when she was doing her time in the California Correctional Institute for Women in Corona.

Trudi’s new sponsor, Louise, told her to call her father to thank him for the birthday gift. She knows her father will answer. After all, he’s a teacher, and college teachers are always at home in the summer. Something in the back of her mind remembers the times before he left, when she was a small child. He made her laugh by reading funny story lines into the children’s books. She made him laugh with her mispronunciations. “Pinch pies” for French fries.

“Trees” for broccoli. An ex-navy man, he would give her close order drills. When he said, “About face,” she would hold her pudgy hands on either side of her cheeks and smile. She really has not been with him on a personal level for over twenty years. Children are so literal, she muses, as she punches in the numbers.

178 “Hi, is Rick there?” she asks, already passing her palm nervously over the back of the plastic phone. Why does she want to be high when she talks to him? She knows he’s been sober many, many years now. He lives in San Diego with his new wife, a Jewish woman she has never met. She once was going to take the bus from Victorville to San Diego, but she got high instead.

“Hello, who is this?” says the female voice.

“This is Trudi. Is my Dad there?”

“He’s asleep right now.”

“Oh, wow. I didn’t know. I’ll call some other time.”

“No, I’ll get him. I know he’ll want to talk to you.”

Asleep in the middle of the afternoon? She remembers when she would go days without sleeping—high on crystal —accomplishing things she never knew she could accomplish, yet never finishing anything.

When she became a welfare mother of nine children, she would console herself with the fact that she needed speed to do all the chores of a stay-at-home mom. But speed has its way with you. It’s like a giant light that clicks on inside you and makes you alive like nothing else can make you feel. It shines a light into the labyrinth of addiction. She’s been off it for ten days. When she received her father’s fifty dollar gift certificate for Target in the mail, she was on her eighth day without using. Just past her birthday. It was what he said in the accompanying card’s lines that made her stay clean for two more days. “Just for one day.

That’s how I made it these 20 years. You can do it too, Trudi. I know you used to work here, so I guess you can find the best deals. Love, Dad.”

179 Her throat tightens as she waits for the phone to be passed to him.

“Hello, Trudi! Happy birthday, honey!”

She knows that voice, even though it’s been ten years since she’s seen his face. “Thanks, Dad. I’ve got some good and bad news.” That fat chick in the front row of her Narcotics Anonymous meeting said tweakers see life in black and white. She said there are the highs and lows, but we live for the highs.

Sex without crystal is inconceivable, but it is not the other person’s body we want. We only want the heightened awareness of our own body because we are high.

“The good news is that I got my driver’s license back because Armando paid me some overdue child support payments. He’s out of prison now. The bad news is that my boyfriend Jeff and I are living out of our car because our slumlord kicked us out.”

“Oh, you know, you only have one day, Trudi. As long as you’re clean, you’re as good as anybody else.

What happened with the landlord?

Were you using drugs?

Where’s your mother?”

She knows that topic well. “She really got on my nerves.

She was driving me crazy. She’s living somewhere else now. Jeff and I try to live at other people’s places, but it’s hard with the baby and all. The slumlord told us she was demolishing the house, and then, three days after we left, we saw she was laying tile, fixing the windows and plumbing, stuff she never did when we were living there!”

“It sounds like she’s going to rent to someone else or even sell the place. You might check with Legal Aid. I don’t think she can do that to you.”

180 “Yeah, I know. I was at the courthouse the other day for the child support, and I talked to someone.” How is she talking to him like this? She wants to protect herself from the pain. She is crashing into the abyss that tweakers know so well. She’s afraid she won’t be able to come out of this one. “I’ll see about it, Dad. Jeff’s working, so we can get food for the baby, but we need a place to stay. I’ll check with Legal Aid like you said.”

“I have something I want to read to you. Remember when you got arrested? Your brother called me on the phone, and I wrote a poem. It was just published, and I want you to hear it. I call it ‘Gothic Gunshots.’”

Oh, shit! Now he is trying to get inside her head again with his lectures about drugs and alcohol. Doesn’t he know who owns her head? Tina, glass, the crank monster.

It’s like Louise said at N.A., “Tweakers who have gone as far as we have don’t know the difference between the high and real life. The only real life is when we’re high, and we can never appreciate normal life again. You know, a good movie, a good book, stuff the normies get high on? They’ll never be the same for us.”

“Well?” he says. “May I read it?”

“Yes,” she says, swallowing hard and staring at the orange tree in Louise’s backyard. Last night, her sponsor, Louise, told her, “Only seven percent of us ever make it to normal life again, Trudi. Are you gonna make it?” The tree has one shriveled orange at the top branch, about ready to fall.

She is that orange right now.

“Yes, I’d love to hear your poem, Dad.” She grits her teeth and waits. As she listens, she cannot focus on the words.

Only two stanzas came through to her consciousness.

181

Flashback 31 years . . . I stood at the window of the nursery, tears in my eyes, amazed . . . the miracle of life . . . my daughter . . . the feminine side I could never find in my drunken, drugged years.

She grew up and I grew apart . . . staring into bottles in darkened hallways and in bars, slowly going mad.

I want to call my daughter, but my hand freezes over the phone.

I want to write another letter, but I write this, instead.

I know she must find her bottom. Is it a gothic bottom?

She can hear him take a deep breath. She knows that he expects her to say something. She tried writing a journal once in prison. But she knew she needed inspiration, and she found it. A connection. She got some crank from an enterprising guard. She filled an entire notebook in two days of writing. She was going to send it to him, but she read it again when she was sober. It sounded like the ranting of a lunatic.

“I like it. You know, the cops took my kids the same day I was busted. Some state van pulls up and they pile them in like a bunch of illegals. This cop gets in my face, and I’ll never forget what she says to me. She says, ‘You call yourself a mother? Your children could have been killed in there! Blown up in a meth lab explosion. You think it’s not possible, you bitch? I’ve seen it happen. Goddamned tweakers! Get her out of my sight!’ I was high that day, Dad. Her words never registered inside my brain until I came down later inside the jail cell. I wanted to die.”

“I know, honey, I know. We wanted to take your kids, but you and your mother didn’t want me to have them. You

182 refused to sign the papers. Remember? Do you hate me that much, Trudi?”

She really wants to get high. Her mind is drifting to the same spot where she waits for her connection to appear.

It is Jeff now, with whom she had another child, Connor.

Armando is straight and working in construction. Their children are sprinkled amongst families in Victorville. She is not allowed to contact a single one. Jenna, Arlene, Brad, Brittany, Soloman, Christine, Jolene, Armando and Francene. Is Connor next? These other children, once completely connected to her, were now torn from her like an abortion. The Pentecostals raved about not having abortions, but she knows better. Her children could be in abusive families. She knows these families, and they all get money from the State, and the State rarely checks up on the children’s welfare anymore. They all don’t care.

Cutbacks all around. Crowded prisons, crowded hospitals, crowded minds full of dreams—all that American Idol bull crap! Reality TV. Jeff is dealing weed and tarring roofs.

His connection is a secret, but he makes enough for them to stay out of trouble. But now they live out of his car.

Her mother caught them getting high in the house. That’s the real reason her mother moved out. But, she is clean today, isn’t she? Just for one day.

“Dad?” she can feel her voice tremble, and she can barely grip the phone.

“What, baby? What is it?”

“Can I call you if I think I’m going to use? My sponsor says I need to call somebody to talk to before I use. I could really use some help here.”

“Of course you can call me. Any time, day or night, as long as you haven’t used. When I was getting sober, my

183 sponsor told me the same thing. All you have is one day.

That’s what you must remember. There are only three paths for people like you and me. We can stay sober, we can kill ourselves or we can go crazy and end up in prison.

You have to get on the right track, sweetheart. There’s no middle road here. Remember when my Dad died? I made you promise me you would get a sponsor and get into N.A.? The sponsor even called me, so I sent you the money from his estate. Your mother told me you got high with Jeff and then you got arrested for driving with a suspended license. Can I trust you today? To thine own self be true. That’s what it says on the twenty-year token I have in front of my eyes right now. You were just fooling yourself, Trudi, don’t you see?”

She exhales. “Okay. Thanks. I’ll call you,” she says, and she closes the phone and notices that the orange is still there on the tree.

Trudi walks inside the house and returns the cell to her sponsor, Louise. Louise looks at her and holds Trudi’s shoulders in her pudgy hands. “Connor’s asleep. I want you to go meet Jeff and tell him you’ve decided to stay with me until he can get his shit together. There’s no room for him in your life right now, Trudi. It’ll be the end of the line for you.” Trudi suddenly has a hallucination that transforms her sponsor into a faun, a horned beast of the labyrinth that she saw in a movie the night before.

“I know. Thanks for watching Connor. I’ll be back.” Trudi steps around the big monster, as she walks over to kiss the head of her infant son, who is sleeping in the stroller.

She needs to take care of him, and he seems to be the key to the only safe passage out of this labyrinth. She needs the soft, real touch of her son, and she needs him to need her in a clean, healthy way.

184 Trudi remembers more of the movie she watched with Jeff at their friends’ house. It was called Pan’s Labyrinth. It was in Spanish, and Jeff and the others were stoned, and they laughed throughout most of the film, but Trudi stayed straight. In the film, there is a climactic scene when the girl is told by the faun of the labyrinth that she can prove she is a princess only by taking the baby and going into the center of the labyrinth. The girl drugs her step-father, steals her baby brother and journeys with him in her arms down into the center of the labyrinth. However, the faun is waiting there for her and tells her the only way the entrance to the kingdom can be opened is by taking the blood of an innocent. He wants her baby brother’s life, and he hands her the dagger to kill him. Instead, her step-father, who has followed her, staggers into the labyrinth, takes the baby from her, and shoots her. As the girl’s innocent blood flows over the tabernacle leading to the entrance to the underworld, the gates open, revealing the girl, reborn, as a princess, with her real father and mother sitting in thrones beside her.

Outside the house and into the heat of the Victorville summer, Trudi feels like she is journeying into her own labyrinth. Her mind and her body are aching for drugs to soothe her pain, but she knows that she must stay clean, just like the girl in the film did, to save this one child from harm. She could not protect her other children from being taken from her, but Trudi believes that if she can stay clean, for just one more day, she can save Connor.

She knows all these streets from her years as a welfare mother and speed freak.

Airbase Road was called “freebase road” by the freaks. Mojave Drive was “mo’ havoc.” And Bear Valley Drive was, of course, “Beer Valley.” It’s amazing how much territory she covered in those many years. The backyard barbecues, the children

185 playing in the rubber pools, the gang fights, the violence, the drugs, always the drugs, hiding in the corners of the houses, in the garages, inside the cars, inside the brain, altering the reality of poverty and the incessant heat, and, all the time, that tiny voice was growing inside her, “Just one day. That’s all I have is just one day.” Trudi wants a goal and a purpose to her life. She wants the chance to make amends to her children and help others who are trying to escape the labyrinth of drug addiction. She obtained her GED, with the help of her father, and now she wanted to go back to school to get her degree in drug rehabilitation counseling. This was the test she needed to prove she was worthy. Just like that little girl in the movie, she needed to accomplish the tasks in order to open the doors to her new world, free of the Fascist dictatorship of drugs and the insane deals they bring.

Jeff’s car is parked off of Palmdale (“Pawndale”), where there are dozens of pawn shops, welfare check cashing offices, Hillbilly bars and strip joints decorating the avenue.

She can see Jeff in the back seat, his feet up, blazing a slim joint in the darkness. The windows are frosted, to prevent prying eyes, and Trudi knows he is toking on some of his product. He always says, “I won’t sell anything without trying it first. What kind of businessman sells shit he hasn’t tested?”

Trudi opens the back door to the Ford Escort and the gust of bitter-sweet smoke hits her nostrils. Jeff is smiling up at her, expertly pinching off the joint between the nails of his thumb and forefinger and holding it to his lips so he can get the last bit of THC from the burning roach. He never uses a roach clip. He says they’re for pussies.

186 “I’m going to stay with Louise. She has Connor. And I’m going to go to Legal Aid tomorrow morning to file a complaint. I need to stay sober.”

“Louise? Who is Louise? I want to play with my baby!

This shit won’t ride, little lady. Here, look. I have some ice for you.” Jeff extends his grimy arm toward her. He calls himself her “tar baby,” because when he gets off work he looks black and sticky from tarring roofs all day.

Roofing is one of the few jobs that will employ ex-convicts.

Jeff is not a bad man, she thinks, as she stares at the slivers of white inside his dark palm. She knows she’ll feel much better if she smokes the glass. Tina wants her to use. It is the drug that she mistakes for good times.

Good times are not good anymore.

She turns from him and tears begin to stream down her cheeks. She is not crying because she can’t get high. It’s amazing to her, but even after all these years of depleting her joy with the drug that devours a body’s source of authentic emotion, serotonin and dopamine, she can still remember what it was like to feel good. She always laughed at the word, “dopamine.” When she was high, she called it “dope of mine.” Mispronunciations. Laughter when she was a child. Her father’s voice, “Just one day.

That’s all we have. Just one day.” Connor waits for her at Louise’s house.

“Get inside this car and turn on with me, babe,” says Jeff, his voice a connection with what she knows is a false reality. His world leads down into the labyrinth, where she can never return. She needs to find her way back to the faun, her sponsor, and she must protect her baby!

She says nothing. She begins to walk down Palmdale, and she tries to hold on to some object or person to keep her sane. A homeless woman comes up to her and smiles at

187 her, a toothless grin. She knows the saying from her days in church, “But for the grace of God go I.” This woman is her moment. Trudi takes the old woman by the hand and leads her up the street. “Come with me,” Trudi says, holding her head up high and looking beyond this reality.

“We’re going to get ourselves something good to eat. My sponsor can make some fantastic lasagna.”

Trudi hears the Ford Escort swerve up onto the sidewalk, but only the old homeless woman, who is used to these streets, sees it, and she pushes Trudi away from the oncoming car. The speeding car, however, does not miss the old woman, who is crushed against the window of a pawnshop.

Trudi stares in disbelief from her sitting position on the sidewalk, as the life blood oozes from the old woman’s body. The blood of an innocent, Trudi thinks, and she sees that Jeff’s body has also left the car, and his dark form has impacted the brick wall of the pawn shop, missing the window, which would have probably saved his life. Trudi believes Jeff has died high. He is forever lost to the labyrinth.

After the police arrive, Trudi wanders up to a female cop standing near the lifeless body of Jeff. “You know the deceased?” the cop asks.

Trudi knows this woman’s face. She is the same woman who cursed at her and took her children away. Trudi’s throat constricts.

Just one day. I must get out of labyrinth. “Yeah, I know him. But, listen. I’m an addict, and I need to call somebody right now. Can I use your phone?”

The woman, without a hint of recognition on her face, hands Trudi her patrol phone. “Make it quick,” she says.

188 Trudi punches the numbers, and it rings. “Louise, is that you?”

“Yes, it’s me, sweetheart. What’s wrong?”

“There’s been an accident. But I’m okay. I’m still clean.

You were right. I can’t feel anything. Why is that? I want to feel something, but all I can think about is holding Connor and keeping him safe. It’s like he is my last link to sanity. Can you come over to Palmdale and pick me up? I need to hold my baby.”

“Yes, I will. I’ll bring Connor with me. You just stay right where you are, honey, and keep breathing deeply. We’ll get through this. It’s just one more day.” Trudi gives Louise her location and hands the phone back to the officer.

As Trudi sits on the brick ledge in front of the pawn shop’s smashed window she can see a door as it slowly opens up in the middle of the sidewalk. It leads down into a realm where she has been held captive for many years.

However, on this day, a day when she needed to save her son, she can finally stare past that labyrinth and watch for her sponsor’s old Chevy as it comes sputtering down Palmdale Avenue to her rescue. As the red and blue lights from the police cars and fire trucks revolve, they reflect on her face, and Trudi is smiling, and she can hear, clearly, perhaps for the first time in her life, the sound of her own breathing. There is no rush to go somewhere, to hide from something or someone; there is only the calming presence of her own life.

189

Taxi I was out of work for most of that year, along with millions of other Americans, having just lost my part-time job teaching art to a middle school class of entitled students.

One of the darlings, an iPod-wielding sixth-grade girl, Celine, accused me of “touching her inappropriately” during class and “picking on her,” and my master teacher took her side. I lost my cool and shouted back that the kid was “refusing to move out of her seat where she was blocking the view of the cacti we had set-up for sketching purposes.” In my usual, awkward manner, I knocked over the plant and it fell on a skinny Asian boy by the name of Thien. To his credit, the little guy just stood his ground and shook like a leaf, with the dagger-like needles penetrating his bared arm, as his teacher and the student screamed at each other. These kids are either preparing themselves to sue others or to live a tortured, lower class life of piercings, tattoos and persecution.

I think I must have been in the teachers’ data base of San Francisco as an art teacher with an “anger management problem” because I even stopped getting calls for substitute jobs around town. I don’t own a car, so the only way I can get to work is by the BART and by my bike, usually a combination of both. The only job I could find was working in a mental health treatment facility called

190 “The Bridging Lab,” which is a non-profit organization that gets money from the state to house “clients” who come out of the detox and mental wards of hospitals all over the county. Many of them are also homeless, so the evils of mental illness, sometimes suicidal behaviors and substance abuse problems, make my job one of the most depressing occupations I’ve ever had. As I also suffer from diagnosed depression, along with an MFA in Fine Art from San Francisco State, I often wonder if I identify more with the patients than I do with the staff. No kidding around here, up until I met Susan, I was almost certain I was going to become a member of the “thorazine shuffling corps” under my watch, and my mother was calling and emailing me almost every day to see how I was. I was making only twelve dollars an hour on a part-time job, without benefits, and my art work productivity had ground to an almost deadly stop.

The chill of San Francisco enlivens one to the point of joy, especially if you are a tangible being who becomes immersed in his environment. The fog in the early mornings and evenings creeps into your very soul, and the result is that you almost feel like you are possessed by the ghosts of all the people who died in the Great Fire, or the many gay lovers who have been consumed by the physical depression called AIDS. My depression, thanks be to Fate, is merely mental, but it can still get me down so badly at times that I can’t move from my single occupant only apartment off of Market Street in the Tenderloin. I will open the window and smoke a cigarette, say, and some asshole from above me will yell down, “Can you put that out? I’m getting your second-hand smoke in here!” I mean, WTF? How am I supposed to be depressed in comfort? Depression is not like the fog. It is more like a killer fog that eats your insides out to leave a skeleton of rotting bone. When I am depressed, all I can think about

191 is this giant, frenetic freak dwelling in the center of my being. No beauty, no insights into reality, just the deadly sapping away at anything resembling life or meaning to life.

I like to dwell near the MOMA when I am not depressed. I often wonder if the acronym for the Museum of Modern Art were planned so it sounded “motherly” in nature. For that’s what the building is to me. She is my artistic tit, wherein I go to suckle and dream, and suckle some more, until I get depressed all over again due to the rejections I’ve been getting for the art pieces I’ve been sending off to panels of unknown jurists who are deemed “experts” in modern painting, sculpture and other forms of nouveau art. My mother and step-father once took a tour with me into the belly of MOMA, and she (my Jewess mother, that is), stood staring at a painting that was completely white and hanging for everyone to see. “How, may I ask, does this represent art?” she asked, in her New York City realist’s voice. “You have done so much more, Aaron, and your pieces are truly creative! This is absurd!”

I tried to tell her that it was the anti-artistic statement that made the white canvas a work of art, but I saw in her face that she was not convinced. Ergo, we shuffled off to see the other floors, and I gradually separated myself physically from them to tour on my own. All alone once again.

However, it was during a reverie moment in MOMA that I first met the woman who was going to change my life forever. She was standing, alone, gazing intently at a piece by Richard Pierce. Mr. Pierce, it seems, had fancied himself a decorator of canvass with what turned out to be the carcasses of several animal and insect species. The background was pitch black, and stuck to its surface, in a

192 random fashion, were the bodies of a squirrel, a rat, a cat (alley), a dog, many, many cockroaches, some mice, some giant varieties of ant, and, in the exact center, what looked to be a human eyeball. The artist had entitled it “LookyLou.” I, who had seen the piece the day previously and had promptly gotten depressed, began observing this woman as she observed the painting.

She was in her late twenties, tall, statuesquely so, it would seem, and her hair was the color of burnt umber, and it coiled loosely down her velvet-coated back in twirls of grandeur. Her eyes were hazel, I believe, but it was the intensity of those eyes that made one loopy as one gazed at her. I have never gazed with such intensity in my entire life. You see, it is my lack of focus that has kept me down most of my adult life. I lack what my gay Italian analyst once called “innovative birthing abilities.” I can create a project, and, wonders be, even complete it.

However, when it comes to talking about it or selling it to the waiting public, I become fixed in a trance of doom.

The dark cloud of depression eventually seeps into me, and I end up staring at the piece with as much doubt as is in the questioning look of the inquisitor, be it potential customer, art dealer or what have you. I lusted after this woman’s piercing eyes that brimmed with confidence and vitality.

And, lo and behold, she turned toward me and began to speak! “Why didn’t I think of this before?” she asked, as if I were her kindred spirit. “What the living hell do I think I’m doing? I’m not a painter. I should be a taxidermist!”

With a rigid set of her jaw, she turned back to the painting

by Mr. Pierce, her alabaster, sinewy hands feeling the surface of the bodies on the work until a guard sidled over and began tisking at her with a disapproving glare. One does not touch the MOMA!

193 “By my father’s dead soul, that’s exactly what I’m going to learn to do!” she sang, and she did a little jig right there in front of the amazed guard and me.

I was so taken with this woman’s antics that I couldn’t help but blurt out, “You mean, you don’t know how to create animal figures?”

“Of course not, silly bean! That’s what makes it so fabulous. I am going to explore how to do this act of animal art, and I am going to become the best taxidermist money can buy! I will not, however, ever—by my Sierra Club card-carrying honor—ever do a dog, cat, or any other pet! How creepy is that? The poor things, getting dusty and eventually decrepit, and the owners becoming perhaps mentally deranged in the process—that will just never do!”

“Listen. Do you mind if I tag along and help you learn?” I couldn’t believe my own audacity. I was actually discussing mutual work with this gorgeous beauty, and I wondered if I had not gone over to the dark side into my clients’ realm. I know they would certainly appreciate my dabbling in the “dark art” of sorcery, mummification and animist art, but I was not to be dissuaded. “I have an MFA, and I would really enjoy seeing how this is done.

And, I must admit, I totally admire your enthusiasm!”

There. I said it. I waited for the crush of disappointment as she refused, but, in a burst of joy, she put her arms around my bent and skinny shoulders.

“Of course! I will need a partner. You look like a worthy sort. Upstanding, twinkling blue orbs; do you still own all your teeth?” She pinched me on the cheek and I grinned, rather crookedly, back at her. She was exactly my height, five feet ten, and we, I suppose, looked to be quite the pair as we headed for her place to do some Googling and

194 ogling (at least on my part), and becoming instant, artistic soul mates. ***

Susan Mastroianni, of course, was Italian (like my analyst), but she was, most certainly, hetero, and she lived in a modernly furnished condo in the hills of North Beach, close to the San Francisco Art Institute. As she was searching for the steps and the products needed for one to begin an official taxidermy business (yes, there is a taxidermy.net), she suddenly stopped taking notes and printing out pages.

I had been silent, as I was in quite a stupor. Never before had I seen a person work with such fervent fever.

Whenever I did a project, it was like pulling teeth from a Saber-toothed tiger. With Susan, work was simply an extension of her being. She flowed into it and kept right on going, just like that stupid television commercial rabbit. When she turned toward me, her eyes became moist with reflection.

“You know,” she said, putting a hand around my neck, “I’m going to miss the painting. The conversion of reality into art is about as good as sex ever is,” she added, and then we became one at that moment. She pulled me toward her bedroom, and the rest, of course, is boudoir lore. I would describe the specific anatomical feats we accomplished, but it would not be prudent at this point in my story. I will, therefore, leave it to your imagination to explore what two artists could do in the way of commingling two imaginative minds and bodies.

And then, as if she had simply taken a brief siesta, she was up and at the computer once more, fresh and invigoratingly pursuing her immediate goal.

I was

195 dumbfounded. There was no languorous musing in bed, staring at the ceiling, letting out heavy sighs of love.

Susan was not that kind of woman. She was a human dynamo, and I was ready to see just how much she could teach me about initiative and business acumen.

The following days and weeks flew by. Susan had all the materials she needed shipped to her by UPS overnight, and her new web domain was up and running in a week.

She called her new artistic enterprise “Taxi.” The visitor to the web site was greeted by a giant, yellow taxicab on the flash page, driven by—what else?—a colorful llama. The name was certainly simple enough, but her web pages were not. On them, she explored, in carefully rendered, step-by-step photographs, art sketches and paintings, the way she would handle each and every job. Her work, as she so eloquently phrased it, was the “artistic rendering of life in Nature.” She wanted the high end clientele, most certainly. Museums of Natural History, hunters and exhibitors who wanted to show the local flora and fauna in its most exacting and realistic poses were all going to be impressed by how well Susan was going to “render” the animals they wished to have “taxied.”

Susan had a “click-to-order” menu of every variety of wild animal, bird and fish, and all the client need do is select the animal, have the remains shipped to her in whichever speed necessary for their needs, and she would do the rest. She also had sample “poses” of scenes from Nature, wherein the animal was seen doing what this animal most interestingly did, whether it is chasing prey, spiraling and pirouetting in elaborate mating dances and other idiosyncratic rituals, as well as giving birth and even being hunted by humans. It was all there, including a big sign that read “Absolutely no pets can be taxied!”

196 Susan gave me specific and detailed instructions on orders, and it was really quite simple to accomplish the taxidermist’s “art.” I have always been entranced by living beings, animals included, so cutting their skins and immersing them in plaster of paris solution to be molded onto Susan’s artistic “poses” was an easy assignment. I enjoyed the way they looked, and putting the final points of marble eyes, plastic beaks, claws and other touches were extremely satisfying, albeit simple in task. Susan and I would often make love in her studio/taxidermy lab, and it was quite disconcerting having dozens of animals peering at us as we cavorted in various Kama sutra poses of our own. Owls, raccoons, possums, Big Horn sheep, snakes, and many other varieties graced the confines of her studio proper. However robust our love-making, our relationship was to remain as posed and stiff as Susan’s objects d’art.

As she explained to me one evening over a candlelight spaghetti dinner at The Stinking Rose Restaurant, “Aaron, you just don’t have the income potential that I need for a permanent relationship. I am paying you as a part-time assistant, and, quite frankly, I’ve been seeing other men.”

Susan, of course, knew about my clinical depression, my “melancholia,” as she called it. However, it did not seem to deter her from casting my love into the flaming pit of Hell. I simply smiled and slurped my spaghetti strands into my skull, as if I were inhaling spikes. I did not show up for work at her place of business for one year. When I did appear at Taxi, Inc. again, I was a new man. Is it not true that an artist must journey into Hell before he can enter Paradise? If so, that is exactly what I accomplished in a year. ***

197

I first got my inspiration while working at my other job at The Bridging Lab. I worked in the evenings there, and I was responsible for making certain the clients took their meds, cleaned their rooms and stayed in a sane state of mind. After having been dumped by Susan, I wasn’t feeling much different than my suicidal charges. One night, as I was walking along, looking in on the sleeping folks, I suddenly realized that our economy had indeed taken a toll on the lowest ninety percent of our population, but the top ten percent were doing just dandy, thanks to the tax breaks and the increasing ability of the rich to stash their cash in off-shore accounts and other tricky business deals. I was walking by the tube in the entertainment room, and it was set to CSPAN, and one of the senators was speaking on the floor. In a moment of what Psychiatrist Dr. Carl Jung called “synchronicity” (not to mention Sting, the musical group), this senator was pointing out that there were at least a trillion dollars stashed in off-shore accounts, unable to be taxed by the government.

I then remembered that some of the richest men in America wanted to be preserved in some way. Ted Williams, the baseball star, wanted to be frozen in a cryogenic state, hoping that a future scientific advancement would enable him to be unfrozen and cured back to life. Roy Rogers, the famous movie and television cowboy, wanted to be stuffed and placed on his already displayed Palomino, Trigger, in Apple Valley, California. It was never allowed, but the wish was still there. Finally, there was the advent of cloning, and the possibility that the super-rich would be able to afford being duplicated, in total, to give them living “mini-me’s” to perhaps do their

198 bidding in some creative ways. The possibilities, in other words, were endless.

So, I plopped myself down at the computer and went to work. I was going to become what Susan wanted. I was going to become one of those top ten percent who never had to work again. I knew it could be done, and now I had the initiative to accomplish it. The need of love in one’s life can keep the worst depression in abeyance. Thus, in six months I had my business up and running from a private, password-protected site on the Internet. In honor of Susan, I called my service “Taxi to Paradise.”

One year to the day Susan dumped me inside The Stinking Rose, I returned, like Douglas MacArthur, to the scene of my biggest loss. The fog that day was coming in, and I greeted it with a new optimism. My meds were working great, and I felt chipper as I climbed up the hill to her condo. I could see her working inside, as the glass windows expose her to the street below. Even when we made love, we were, most likely, being seen like taxidermy specimens. I imagine there were many undergraduates from the Art Institute who passed by, looked up, and spotted our undulating, naked bodies getting it on inside the zoo-like glass menagerie.

I greeted her at the door with a confident hug. “Hello, Susan, I hope I didn’t come at an inconvenient time,” I said, pushing my way past her and into the living room.

“Why, no, of course not. It’s great to see you again, Aaron. I trust you’re doing well? You never called, and I really didn’t have a number for you,” she said, pushing a wisp of her burnt umber hair away from her face.

“Listen. I’m going to get right down to business here,” I said, sitting down on her polka-dotted couch. “I now make

199 five hundred thousand dollars per client in my new taxi business.”

She sat down, visibly shocked, and exhaled. “What the hell are you saying? How can you be making that much money in the taxidermy business? There’s no big profit to be made. I stay in it now out of love for the animal form, not for the money.”

“I now own my own condo on Half-Moon Bay at Candlestick Point. I was able to furnish it with the latest modern art that was once featured at the MOMA. Not only that, but I am about to go public with my new business, and I wanted to extend you the opportunity to buy into the ground floor of a new industry that will rock this country big time.” I crossed my cargo-shorts legs and flapped my leather sandals at her. My Boy George tee-shirt was giving off heavenly vibrations as the sun went down outside.

“Really? That’s marvelous, Aaron!” Susan said, and she moved closer and grabbed onto my wrists. “You must tell me what your business entails.”

So, I began to confidently tell my story to her. I started with a little tidbit about the rich matron in Castro Valley who wanted her husband’s penis preserved. She was so wealthy, and I was so surprised at my first client, I didn’t know what to do. “I told her I charged by the inch, if you can believe that,” I said, and Susan began to giggle, in spite of herself. “I ended up with a forty-dollar profit, but I had learned my lesson about what to charge and how to market my services,” I added, smiling at her good humor.

“Human body parts? How can you be doing such a thing?

It must be totally illegal. I can’t imagine how you’re

200 staying in business,” said Susan, and disapproval began to shroud over her face.

a

cloud

of

“No, no, you don’t understand. It’s not the actual taxidermy work that sells these rich people. It’s the sales job that sold the Pharaohs in Egypt, who wanted insurance that they would live forever in the after-life. My business provides them that service. I call it a ‘taxi to the afterlife.’ My splash page features a limousine, however, and not a yellow taxi.”

“Well, go on,” she said, letting go of my hands and beginning to bite her nails, which was a bad sign.

Whenever Susan bit her nails, she was worrying.

“I discovered that one can do business in human taxidermy in only one state in the union, Florida. It takes over six months of court time, with the family participating in all the process of allowing permission and giving reasons, but it can still be done. The trick is to make these rich bastards believe they’re getting something more exclusive than just a mummy job. You know, they pay for the sizzle and not the steak, so to speak.” I was into my story now, and her discouraging look could not stop me.

“I use a process invented by Dr. Gunther von Hagens, in 1990, when he performed the first whole body plastination*. I have everything set-up in Florida, and my lawyers work with the clientele until they’re ready for the big moment. I call it the Moment of Eternal Possibilities.

They can dig it. I go over all the information about cloning and the future of stem cell research, and I inform them that I keep their loved-one’s DNA remains inside hermetically and bacteria-free cylinders, waiting for that certain day in the near future when science will find a way to bring their relative back to life. It’s all artistic and scientifically accurate—the brochures, that is—and when

201 they see my model from the first plastination—a real work of art--they are totally amazed.”

Susan got up from the couch, staggered a bit, and held her hand up to her mouth as if she were going to vomit. “Get out!” she screamed at me, pointing with her elbows at the door. “I never want to see you again, you . . . you . . .

Doctor Frankenstein!” ***

I am sorry, dear Susan, but plastination did catch on, and I am today a multi-millionaire, inching my way toward the billion mark. I have my own psychiatrist, and I employ my former “clients” from The Bridging Lab. You would be amazed how well crazy folks get on with the super-rich.

You know the old saying, don’t you? If you’re wealthy, then you’re considered eccentric? And, if you’re poor, you’re crazy? Well, my employees are wealthy enough now to blend right in with my other clients. We’re almost one big, happy family, so to speak.

My dream has caught on internationally as well. The artistry of my full body relics are displayed in all the famous museums. I even attended an exhibit of the former Queen of Holland, who paid me a handsome sum, and she was put on view at, have you guessed it? The San Francisco MOMA! I even spotted poor Susan in the audience that day, and there was some satisfaction that I felt inside as I noticed a slight look of disappointment as she heard the “oohs and aahs” from the hundreds in attendance, as they looked at the life-like, plastic replica of the queen. What am I thinking at that very moment? It may sound peculiar, but I am thinking about an old movie I watched with my mother, who lives in a condo in San

202 Diego, and it was about her generation. It starred Dustin Hoffman, another nice Jewish boy, and he had just gotten out of the backyard swimming pool of his family’s upscale suburban home. It was kind of a baptism, of sorts, as he had just graduated from college and was looking for guidance about his future from his elders. One of those elders, a brawny, cigar-smoking American businessman (perhaps one of my clients?) grabs Dustin by his shoulders and barks at him, “I want to say one word to you. Just one word.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are you listening?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Plastics.”

A little late, perhaps, but I am the Jewish youth who took his words to heart. Yes, and I’ve even plastinated thousands of those—hearts, that is. #

#

#

*Plastination is a process at the interface of the medical discipline of anatomy and modern polymer chemistry.

Plastination makes it possible to preserve individual tissues and organs that have been removed from the body of the deceased as well as the entire body itself. Like most inventions, plastination is simple in theory: in order to make a specimen permanent, decomposition must be halted. Decomposition is a natural process triggered initially by cell enzymes released after death and later completed when the body is colonized by putrefaction bacteria and other microorganisms. By removing water

203 and fats from the tissue and replacing these with polymers, the plastination process deprives bacteria of what they need to survive. Bodily fluids cannot, however, be replaced directly with polymers, because the two are chemically incompatible. Dr. Gunther von Hagens found a way around this problem: In the initial fluid-exchange step, water in the tissues (which comprises approximately 70% of the human body) and fatty tissues are replaced with acetone, a solvent that readily evaporates. In the second step, the acetone is replaced with a polymer solution.

The trick that first proved to be critical for pulling the liquid polymer into each and every cell is what he calls “forced vacuum impregnation.” A specimen is placed in a vacuum chamber and the pressure is reduced to the point where the solvent boils. The acetone is suctioned out of the tissue at the moment it vaporizes, and the resulting vacuum in the specimen causes the polymer solution to permeate the tissue. This exchange process is allowed to continue until all of the tissue has been completely saturated—while a matter of only a few days for thin slices, this step can take weeks for whole bodies.

The second trick is selecting the right polymer. For this purpose, “reactive polymers” are used, i.e., polymers that cure (polymerize) under specific conditions, such as the presence of light, heat, or certain gases.

Their viscosity must be low, i.e., they have to be very thin liquids; they must be able to resist yellowing; and, of course, they must be compatible with human tissue. The polymer selected determines the look and feel of the finished specimen.

204

The Curse of O. Henry’s Ghost Ace Cameron, whose given name was Roger Alderman, found himself in prison on the evening of the anniversary of the death of O. Henry, whose given name was William Sidney Porter. It was June 5. Ace sat on his rack inside the prison cell, reading The Postman Always Rings Twice, when the ghost of O. Henry appeared. If writers had gods, then Ace’s god had arrived without a burning bush or a bloody cross. Instead, he wore the shining Patten leather shoes and flashing red vest from the Gay Nineties.

The vision of O. Henry was magnanimous: the cleft in his chin, the curl of hair over his forehead, the fancy blue suit and tie. Ace knew it was he. And, over the shouting of prisoners inside other cells on the block, O. Henry waxed poetical about his craft and persona and about Ace’s craft and identity. Despite the insanity of it all, Ace Cameron, or Roger Alderman, believed in this revelation from the past.

“Ace? You call that a writer’s name? I got my nom de plum from one of the prison guards during my Ohio stretch of three years, Orrin Henry. Orrin never spoke a single word to me in all those years. Ergo, I thought it would be an appropriately ironic name to use as my pseudonym.

Where did you get your moniker, young man?”

205 “I play online poker. What better card is there to win with?” said Ace, defensively, waving his hand through O. Henry’s phantom body and shaking his head in disbelief.

“I began writing in prison to support my only daughter, Maggie. Her mother had died, and without the money she received under my fictitious name, Margaret would have been placed in an orphanage. My daughter never found out I was a prisoner because of my pseudonym. What motivates you to write, Ace, besides winning, that is?”

“I want to be big! You should understand that. You were the most popular writer of your day. That’s what this game is all about, isn’t it? My stuff was selling great online. I was called the King of Flash Fiction. Better than Dave Eggers or Robert Coover. It was that lousy woman, La Donna Truman, my agent. She got me into tax trouble.

She thought I should hide income from the I.R.S., so she told me she was investing it in non-profit groups. Turns out she was into artistic online child porno groups. Not too smart. That’s why I’m in here.”

“Tough break, indeed. I suppose you want to know why I am here,” said the ghost, his icy eyes staring directly through Alderman.

“Yeah! That would make my day. We don’t get much in the way of spiritual entertainment in here, as you might imagine. In fact, I think you’re the first ghost ever to show up,” the young prisoner sarcastically grinned and wondered if he could get to see the prison psychiatrist the next day. Nightmares were common in here, but this was absurd!

“Well, you are in luck, young man! I am here to give you the secret behind my success as an author. You see, Ace Cameron, many critics and historians believed I was in

206 touch with the common folks of New York and Texas and that I weaved my stories directly from their lives. They were somewhat accurate. I did get my characters from those I met during my lengthy walks around the towns I visited. However, as you might be aware, people’s actual lives are much more tragic than what we writers can ever invent. For example, my story, ‘The Last Leaf’ was about my own first wife, Athol, who also died at a young age from consumption. However, there was no artist painting a leaf on the wall outside to keep her alive. That was an invention I concocted during a drunken reverie one evening. I was staring at the wall outside my apartment’s window, and the idea came to me. What if some artist painted a leaf on the wall and there was a woman dying, and the artist tells her, ‘You can’t die until that leaf falls?’

So, she hangs on, day after day, believing the leaf is real, and she appreciates life a bit more than she would have without the artist’s deception. Was that the truth? Oh no, not at all! My wife died alone, choking to death on her own vomit. Her wealthy parents disowned her when she was seventeen and married me. We both had tuberculosis.

Her father said we had a death wish.

My father, a physician, also said we were cursed.

Yes, initially, I wanted to marry her for her family’s money. Thus, when her father cut her off, I experienced my first, real-life twist of fate. We were both victims of the same fate. My stories, therefore, were simply romantically fractured and twisted tales of the sordid and ironic portrait we call reality.

Can you now guess what my secret is?”

Ace was interested, despite his incredulous nature. What if this vision were an authentic visit? What if the secret to success were his for the taking? “Can you give me a few more hints?” he asked the ghost, standing up to see if his movement would make the apparition disappear. It did not.

207 “You think your generation has corrupt politicians stealing from the people? Mine had the worst! Have you heard of the Robber Barons?

Ford, Carnegie, Morgan, and Rockefeller? They all stole from the poor in their own, unique ways. We had real sweat shops, where children were worked to death, and their mothers sold their bodies to the highest bidder. This was the world in which I had to create. Between ironic stories, told with bitter humor, I saw the horrible reality all around me. So, can you not yet see what my creative secret was?”

O. Henry’s ghost suddenly took on a physical, substantive presence, and he was no longer transparent. His arms reached out and took young Ace Cameron by his dungaree shirt. Ace could see the veins on the ghost’s neck stand out like purple worms. This was the same man who had run away to Honduras to live with bank robbers and thieves. He was the same author who created lie after lie, just to make money. His secret must have been his use of alcohol. He was also a registered pharmacist when he was seventeen.

He was even a druggist in the prison pharmacy. He could make his own drugs! Aha, what a life! What a fool’s paradise! What irony his mind must have held inside. What twists he must have concocted to protect himself from the world’s painful reality.

The ghost’s hands moved up from Ace’s shirt to his throat.

The prisoner was being choked by O. Henry’s ghost, and Ace fell to the floor with the ghost on top of him, holding on for dear life! Ace gasped and was about to pass out, when he began to yell through his constricted throat, “I know it! I know your secret!”

Almost immediately, the ghost vanished, leaving Ace gasping for air on the floor of his cell. The guards had finally come, and they were peering down at him. He

208 struggled to his feet and waved them away. He had what he needed, and he would begin his truly creative process as soon as he could arrange it. *** When Roger Alderman, alias Ace Cameron, was released early from prison, for good behavior, he was well into his drug and alcohol habit. The California prison where he did his time was a corrupt network of guards who made a business out of prison life. Alderman was able to procure all the alcoholic beverages he could consume and all the pharmacy drugs he could take, simply by “working the system.” In return for writing resumes and letters of reference for guards who wanted to transfer to better prisons, he was given what he wanted. And, as a result, Ace Cameron began his writing career anew, with the ghost of O. Henry on his back, so to speak. His stories were about prisoners who got religion from near-death experiences with angels and demons, a warden who was” taught a lesson” in the last paragraph of the story by a group of artistic “lifers.” His most famous prison story, “The Plea Bargain,” was a twist-ending tale about a black gangster on death row who wrote children’s stories and who is saved from lethal injection by the governor’s wife, who reads one of the gangster’s stories to her daughter on the night of his execution and is so moved by the story that she convinces her husband to pardon him.

However, outside prison walls, Ace’s life took on a different aspect. Although several of his stories were optioned by major Hollywood studios, he continued to drug and to drink to excess, and he lived a bacchanalian life, attending parties, screwing a wide assortment of starlets and potential starlets, and letting his personal life deteriorate.

Alderman believed this was the price he had to pay for his

209 success, and he knew if he stopped the addictive habit, his creativity would cease. It was the “curse of O. Henry,” as he called it. He even told his creative secret to another new author, former actor McCauley Caulkin, who immediately agreed with his philosophy. “Yes, O. Henry’s right. It’s both your fame and your infamy that sell your stuff,” said Caulkin, knocking back tequila shot after tequila shot in the back room of a strip club. “It’s what you pretend to be that makes you famous. It’s not who you really are.

As Ace Cameron continued to write, he also continued to drink and to drug. His writing continued to sell, as he had the twist endings down pat, and this was a popular commodity in these days of conformity and conservatism.

Real life was a rigged affair, full of lies and deception.

Twisted, ironic endings were a fitting conclusion for TV and movie goers as well as for readers. Whereas O. Henry’s audience had only books, magazines and periodicals to read, Ace’s audience streamed audio books from the Internet, enjoyed flash fiction, and canned all their movies and TV shows on their hard drives for future viewing. Ace Cameron’s work was sold on DVD, packaged into MTV specials, and he was even writing song lyrics for trendy groups who needed the verbal irony he could provide. The residuals and royalties came flooding into his bank account, and out again, almost as quickly. Why not? Ace’s attorney was also his drinking buddy.

Ultimately, the “good life” finally caught up with Ace, and he collapsed one evening at a party in Beverly Hills thrown

by Steven Spielberg. It was June 5. He was taken to “Spielberg’s hospital,” Cedars-Sinai, on Beverly Boulevard.

Ace knew he was about to die. Like Sidney Porter, he was also 47 years of age. His liver was shot, and he was way

210 down on the donor list. It was just a matter of days before it would all end.

That night, Roger Alderman, better known as the Hollywood writer, Ace Cameron, was again visited by the ghost of O. Henry. Is this his final curse?

Ace thought, as he twisted in pain beneath the white sheets.

The sound of the morphine drip and the monitoring devices suddenly became silent, and O. Henry appeared, a radiant yet visually triumphant look on his handsome face.

“So, I see you have reached the end. Do you know what my last words were, Ace? That’s right; when you are famous they write down what you say just before you die.”

“No! And I don’t give a fuck!” screamed the modern author, desperate to be lifeless in this world of postmodern tragedy.

“It’s not really profound. I told them to turn the lights up because I did not want to go home in the dark. What is profound is the fact that you seem not to have learned my secret of creativity.”

This was too much for the young writer. Enraged at what he heard, he sat up, in agony, and confronted this damned ghost. “I know your secret! You kept your creativity by twisting reality with booze, sex and drugs. That’s where the irony came from. It worked for me, just the way it worked for you. How can you say I didn’t know your goddamned secret?” Ace yelled, as best he could, before falling over onto his side in the bed, gasping.

“No, my boy, you did not understand. When I told you the story about my wife, I said I married her even though she had no money. She and I were victims of diseases we could not control.

We had tuberculosis, and I had diabetes. Both of these diseases can be controlled today,

211 but they did not have any cure when I was alive. The secret to my creative inspiration was not my use of drugs and alcohol. My secret was my ability to imagine I was not ill. It was my ability to make happy stories for the people who led such tragic lives around me. Don’t you see? You mistook my medicine for the secret beneath the symptoms. Just the way religious people mistake icons for spirituality. My alcohol did not provide any cure for my underlying, incurable maladies. I knew that. My father was a doctor. You should have known that also. An artist’s abilities are given to him by a power much greater than the lonely self. Where it comes from is not to be packaged and sold like a product in your era of consumer capitalism.

No, I meant for you to see my inside secret to creativity, which was love for my fellow man.”

With these final words, the ghost of O. Henry twisted into an authentic, fleshy human from the early twentieth century, and he walked over and did what he wished he could have done for his own wife, many long years ago.

He covered Ace Cameron’s face with a pillow, until he twisted and writhed and finally smothered to death. Or, was it Ace who held the pillow down over his own face after taking the drugs that had been smuggled into him by his lawyer?

Did the curse of O. Henry put an end to flash fiction or to all the lies and political deception of our era?

No. However, for one brief moment, inside a Jewish hospital in Los Angeles, an authentic artist from the past was able to achieve his just revenge over an artist of the post-modern future.

This future worshipped appearances over substance and manipulation over ethics.

212

The Peek-a-Boo Man I saw a ragged, haunted man who spent urgent hours dodging the New York transit police to trace the dates and lineage of the Hapsburg nobility on the walls of the subway stations.--Tim Page, New Yorker, August 20, 2007.

I never thought about it much before the day I saw what really happens to them with my very own eyes. I knew that over 1.9 million children go missing each year in the United States. They have pictures of these kids on milk cartons, on web sites, in magazines, on telephone poles and in flyers slipped inside mail boxes. I have collected thousands of these portraits, and I keep them in my bedroom along with my lesser trophies such as entire encyclopedias that I have memorized, playbills whose casts I have also committed to memory, and thousands of newspaper obituaries, also stored in my eclectically idiosyncratic brain.

This was my mission: I wanted to find out where these children went, and what happened to them, so I used a child, my autistic nephew, Harold, and I took him to Central Park at sundown. The statistics from my Google search state that most child abductions occur in the city park, so this is a likely place for my plan. However, before

213 I go any further, I want you to know that I am not, in any manner, shape or form, a pedophile, pederast or any other “ped” wack-o you can imagine. I just want you to see what is behind these disappearances of children because I have always had a great fear of being abducted myself. It is a terror, is it not, to find oneself, small and alone, inside a crowd of strange adults, or within the shadowy confines of menacing bushes and trees that look human? Or, on the dark pathway home, with nothing but your imagination to guide you into unimaginable horrors, you suddenly see that the only true reality is your own, and that they will always punish you for this knowledge.

You see, I know where these kids go, but I have never been able to prove it. This will be my best and possibly last chance to prove my theory about the Peek-a-Boo Man. I am doing this because people with my disorder need to find out about things that you normal folks do not care to explore.

I have been diagnosed by psychiatrists with Asperger’s syndrome. Normality is strange to me because AS people do not have any empathy. In other words, we cannot understand any other point of view other than our own. In addition, we have obsessive habits that often keep us from being on time or doing things in an orderly fashion. I constantly need structure and sameness in my daily routine, and I have lost many jobs because of my peculiar “habits,” and so I consider myself an outsider to the rest of humanity. This is why, frankly, I believe the Peek-a-Boo Man gets children.

Children, you see, have no problem with autistic behaviors, and this makes them outsiders as well. In fact, obsessive behavior is a plus to kids. Kids can endlessly play games or create a fantastic inner world at the drop of a hat. In

214 fact, most children speak in metaphors and similes rather than in the structured language of so-called “normal” adults. The problems occur when childhood grows into adulthood, and we, the ones who refuse to give in to your world, get diagnosed with AS rather than society allowing us to live on as self-absorbed children. The children, in the meantime, become you. And, you know who you are, don’t you? You are the ones who created the need for the Peek-a-Boo Man. The Peek-a-Boo man came to me one day after my mother had attempted, probably for the millionth time, to get me to respond to a stupid game she called “Peek-a-boo, I see you.” This “game” consisted of her holding her hands up in front of her face and then quickly separating those two white hands while, at the same time, exclaiming in a rather obstreperous voice, “Peek-a-boo! I see you!”

By the look of disappointment on her face, I could always tell she was expecting me to respond to her idiocy in some way. When all I did was gurgle and begin to fixate on the much more interesting dangling earrings on her protuberant ears, she gave up and left the room.

However, that’s when the Peek-a-Boo Man appeared, in all his glory, to render me both speechless and transfixed.

As a toddler, all I remember was that he was the closest being I had ever seen to resemble a human cat. Much later, after I got older, and he had appeared many more times, I researched in some ancient Hindu texts about creatures or “demons” that exist in the world who are a combination of animal and human, and these beings serve a definite purpose in the eternal cosmos. It was the purpose of the Peek-a-Boo Man to capture kids. His face had straight, pin-pointed whiskers just under his velvety nose, and his eyes were an oval and demon-like gold.

215 When he spoke, his teeth were long, sharp and feline under his thin lips. His shape was thinly agile, and he wore a dark trench coat that was stained all over its front and ragged on the cuffs and edges. He always said the same thing to me, the same little rhyme: Peek-a-boo, I’ll get you!

Take you through an inner flue, Inside, where the kids are free To be who they are meant to be!

It wasn’t until I noticed that adults were constantly watching out for their children when they were out in public places that I put two and two together. They were protecting their young from the Peek-a-Boo Man! And, today, as I hold the hand of Harold, my eight-year-old nephew, he on the lowest rung of the autistic ladder, I am both frightened and exhilarated as we wait for the appearance of our demon.

You see, I don’t know where he will take us. It can’t be any worse than where I have read lost children go in this world. They are kidnapped by sex freaks who torture them and keep them as child slaves. They are abducted and are sold overseas into labor, where they make tennis shoes or toxic foods and then they sell the same shit right back to us. They wander the streets in aimless packs, getting involved in drugs, prostitution and gang warfare.

Oh and then there are the ones who legally enter the armed forces to fight other children in wars the older adults started in the first place. Even though the Peek-aBoo Man may be a demon, I can’t believe he will take us to a place worse than we already have here.

216 Harold is a severe autistic, and he is constantly doing repetitious tasks, like counting everything he sees, walking in formulated patterns that only he understands, and checking his clothing in a seemingly endless succession of checks. He is wearing a blue coat that is fastened at his collar with two rabbits’ feet. If you try to unbutton this coat while he is awake, then you will hear Harold scream for a country mile. I can understand this logic, as I am the same way with my missing children collection. In fact, I rarely sleep at night, because I live in constant fear that someone will sneak into my room in the night and take them from me. Harold is considered “severely” autistic simply because he can’t tell you what goes on inside his brain. His communication skills are at a bare minimum.

But, let me tell you, that does not mean that he doesn’t think inside his brain. To be autistic is to be held prisoner by your thoughts. That’s another reason I like the Hindus and their philosophy.

They believe so-called “crazy people” are holy beings, and they feed them and take care of them over in India. They also believe that a person’s thinking is his or her worst enemy because, they say, all of so-called “reality” is not real at all. It is all illusion.

Therefore, when you make such a big deal about what’s going on, you really don’t have a clue about what’s really going on.

The sounds in this park are interesting. Not only are there the usual insects, like crickets and cicadas, there are also the sounds of souls entering the waiting bodies of sentient beings. Did you also know that we autistics can hear and see into what the String Theory physicists call “dynamic and parallel universes”? Now, you say, I can see where he’s coming from! It’s all there in higher scientific theory!

He’s not crazy at all, thank goodness. I am glad you’re comforted because I am not. Even though we can see and hear the parallel realities, we can rarely enter into them.

217 However, I have heard tell of those who can, and I am hoping that Harold and I can also become two of the chosen ones to enter another dimension. I have seen our demon take other children, but I have never seen these children again.

It is only the Peek-a-Boo Man who reappears, even in my dreams, to attempt another abduction. This time, I am going with him!

Harold, my bait, is anxious, and he pulls at my coat. The wind is picking up, and it blows mightily as we stand near a Maple tree next to the playground. It is not the wind that is frightening Harold; it is that dark shape moving toward us out of the shadows of the twilight evening! It is he, the Peek-a-Boo Man! He skitters across the grass like the negative of Wonderland’s White Rabbit.

Peek-a-boo, I’ll get you!

Take you through an inner flue, Inside, where the kids are free To be who they are meant to be!

As he grasps our arms, I can feel a rush of electric current enter my being, and we are quickly transformed into pure energy, minus our fleshly shadows.

The spiraling of electrons can be felt throughout my brain as we rocket into the new dimension.

And then, there is silence and blackness. Am I dead?

Have we all disappeared forever? Is that what the Peek-aBoo Man really represented all these years? Was he just waiting for the right moment to claim his eternal prize?

No, wait, I can feel something.

We are somewhere different. This is a place of natural splendor! It is not a hideous torture den with gnashing teeth and gigantic

218 monsters devouring young flesh. There are trees that climb to the sky, and bubbling brooks racing between boulders. However, as I climb on a boulder nearest to me, it sinks under my feet, like soft, bubble gum granite. It is bubble gum! Harold thrusts both of his hands into the rock and brings the sweet-smelling, elastic chew into his salivating mouth, and he begins chewing with rapturous joy! Between bites, Harold tells me, “Uncle Ross, this is totally awesome!”

Harold can speak in this new universe. But I don’t see the Peek-a-Boo Man. I want him to explain to me where we are and what we must do. Up ahead, I can see the signs of a village in the mist. It has thatch-roofed huts and smoking chimneys.

There are people standing in the village green, and they are doing something. Strange, I do not fear to socialize with these people the way I always did in that other dimension. In your dimension. As we come over the last grassy hill and enter the village, I can now see that these people are all children. And, in their variety of little groups, they are playing all kinds of games.

What else should children be doing? Most of the kids back in the other dimension played indoors on their electronic devices.

It was refreshing to see these kids playing outdoors, in the country, in concert with all the “old school” games of our parents’ and grandparents’ generations.

They were playing tag, red light and green light, statues, and a variety of hide and seek games. Was this our destiny? Were we going to play forever in this natural paradise?

When I came up to one of the groups, I suddenly saw that their faces were perspiring, their clothes were dirty, and they had grim looks of determination on their young faces. These were not children at play. These were children who took their games quite seriously!

219 “What do you think of my children?” The Peek-a-Boo man said, strutting out from behind one of the huts. His face was quite sinister and cat-like; it held the expression I have seen on the face of my own cat, Trixie, as she toys with her prey before, after many hours sometimes, she kills it.

“Think? I don’t think anything here. Why do they look so anxious?” I asked, feeling for the first time a bit incredulous about this new dimension.

“Anxiety is what they create. How insightful of you!” said the Peek-a-Boo Man, rubbing his paw-like hands. “Did you not read in your ancient texts about the truth of the material universe?”

“Truth? You mean this is not a paradise for children to play in? This is not where you take them so they can live out their lives on their own, so no adults can turn them into sexual playthings and suffering laborers?” I was not expecting what he said next, but, deep in the darkest recesses of my solipsistic terror, I knew what he said was the only logical answer to our dilemma.

“No, you’ve got it all wrong, you poor Aspie! This is your existential nightmare. It is meant for only you to see and for you to experience, forever and ever, amen, as they say. Games in your universe are never playful. They are work, just as horrific and exhausting as any labor of Hercules or Sisyphus. These children must win or they die —cast into a fiery pit that’s just over that hill. Some of the children in your old universe were protected by the adults —given sanctuary from the rigors of adulthood—but here, it’s just the opposite! These children look to be at play, but, inside, just as it is inside your brain, there is no happiness other than the looming death that awaits us all or the obsessive attention to the grinding reality of

220 competitive play. Remember how you felt so helpless on the playground, Aspie?

You were locked inside your thoughts as the ball came toward you. Instead of doing the coordinated, mechanical thing—striking the ball with the bat—you focused on the revolutions the ball made, how many turns it must make before crossing the plate, how many seams were on the ball itself. This is what drove you mad! And this is what this inner universe of yours gives to all these children. They can never enjoy their play either because inside their brains they are missing the forest for the trees. In fact, they are obsessed with the lichen that is strangling the tree! Can someone so obsessed with the minutiae of existence ever feel free?”

My head was pounding, and I felt sick to my stomach.

“No,” I said meekly.

“But I thought, at least I imagined . . . “ “Imagined? You imagined this! This is children’s hell, Ross Peters!

And it was created by you and your obsessions. I hope you enjoy it because there is no going back to your little world beyond, where they have a heaven and a hell, good and evil, saints and sinners. It was a rather quaint world, when you stop and think about it. No, here you are trapped inside your own private reality—the one reality you worshipped. The reality of your own obsessive brain!”

Harold ran over to me and punched me hard on the arm.

The pain I felt was worse than any pain I had ever felt before. “Tag! You’re it, Uncle Ross!” It was then that the Peek-a-Boo Man began to laugh, and he is still laughing, even in my sleep.

221

The Web of Love Sam Lawton, a 26-year-old bachelor living in San Francisco, made a few extra bucks on the weekends fixing other people’s computers. He taught high school math and physics during his day job, and this extra work helped him make ends meet. He usually got his referrals from friends and relatives, but when he received a call from Mrs. Veronica Redips, he wondered who she could be. He didn’t list his services on the Internet or on Craig’s List, and his cell phone was not listed. However, when he heard this woman’s sultry voice message, he immediately decided she was worth a call back. “Help me! I can’t go on unless I get my computer fixed. I may not survive unless I can get online again!”

Sam understood such panic, as he was also quite addicted to his computer.

The alarm in this woman’s voice, combined with its deep, throaty pitch, triggered a mixed feeling of compassion and lust inside him. He hadn’t felt this way since Margaret Winthrop accidentally kissed him in the closet at a sixteenth birthday party for his handsome brother, Stuart. In fact, she thought he was Stuart, and he could still remember the moist pressure of her lips and the surprise of her darting tongue between his teeth.

When she found out who he really was, however, she screamed, and Sam hadn’t kissed a woman since.

Sam was a bean pole, a real nerd, and he was still a virgin.

The only social skills he possessed were used inside a classroom. He still wore horn-rimmed glasses that were

222 taped together at the nose bridge, and his yellow corduroy pants and matching Izod teeshirt made him look like a walking pencil or an anorexic summer squash. Outside of his classroom or a computer, he was an accident waiting to happen.

Mrs. Redips, it turned out, was a recent widow, and she sounded authentically helpless about her plight without a computer. Her husband, Phillip, had been a computer geek, and she had constantly relied on his expertise to do everything on her computer.

“Just what’s your specific problem, Mrs. Redips?” Sam asked her, knowing that emotional women needed to be focused or he could never get to the heart of a technical problem.

“I have a server running for my business, and I just can’t seem to get it back online. Ever since Phillip died, I haven’t been able to get my web camera working either.

Without it, my business fails, and I . . .” she sobbed, “won’t be able to continue to support myself. I do hope you can help me.”

Sam drove over to Polk Street, near the Civic Center Plaza, where Mrs. Redips lived in an old, two-story Victorian, and he noted that the house was painted a deep violet. As he walked up the stairs, his senses became acute. Every person in San Francisco had a keen awareness of the senses, it seemed, as the City was at the heart of the New Age consciousness. However, this particular house gave Sam a perceptible chill that he could feel inside his bone marrow. As the door swung open to greet him, with nobody at the threshold, Sam warily stepped inside.

From out of the back of the house came the most beautiful and darkly mysterious woman Sam had ever set his eyes

223 upon. She wore a long, black, satiny gown that covered her hour-glass figure like O. J. Simpson’s glove. Her hair also had a shiny raven’s sheen to it, and it snaked down her shoulders like tendrils of soft licorice.

Her face and hands were alabaster white and her eyes—oh those eyes— were a deeply dark and mesmerizing brown, with speckles of green.

“Oh, Mister Lawton! How kind of you to come on such short notice. The computer’s in the back room. Let me show you.” Mrs. Redips swayed her hips provocatively as she led him into the darkness at the rear of the house.

“Do you have some light?” said Sam, squinting into the darkness.

“Certainly,” she said, and then there was light. The room was large and decorated with a variety of African artwork and furniture. There were crossed spears on the walls with lions’ skins used as backdrops; zebra, wildebeest, and antelope heads also peered out at him from the other walls. The computer stand was a giant spider, and Sam sat down on the fuzzy seat, a smaller version of the same spider.

All the hairy legs around him made him uncomfortable, as he was a bit of an araneophobe. “I gather this is the computer,” he said, clearing his throat.

“What exactly is your business, Mrs. Redips, if you don’t mind my asking? Do you deal in African imports and exports?”

“I do my business by computer, but I sell to the entire world.

That’s why I really need my server to be functioning at its top speed. I have spent quite a bit of money on this special software, and I need it to work at its optimum level.”

224 Stan could feel her breath on his neck as he booted up the computer and hit the delete key to get into BIOS. Then, as he went through his methodical operation of testing for trouble, he could feel her soft breast pushing against his left shoulder blade. The sensation sent a shock directly to his loins.

“Um, Mrs. Redips? Do you mind if I work alone on this for awhile? I’ll come and get you when it’s ready to be used again.”

“Yes! I’m so sorry. It’s just that I’m anxious to get back to my work. Every minute counts in my business, Mister Lawton. If you can get it back online today, I’ll make certain you receive a special reward.”

Special reward? Stan knew this woman must have a digital camera and some kind of sex cam operation going on here. Why else would she be in such a hurry? She probably took drugs and god knows what else. She would probably give him a CD of her doing exotic things on this spider chair in the nude. Or, could it be possible she would teach him even more about the world of personal erotic delights?

The thought made him shiver with joyful expectation as he pounded away at the keyboard.

It was relatively easy for Stan to fix the server. She had some malware infecting the system, and when he ran a spy check in Safe mode he was able to get rid of it. When he booted into Windows, however, he saw that she really did have some special software installed. One program, called “The Web of Love,” really intrigued him. He started the software, and a screen came up that baffled him. It looked like some kids’ program or game. It had a large screen with what looked like a giant web of some sort taking up most of the area. Down at the bottom, on a task

225 bar, were three icon buttons that read, from left to right, “Love,” “Enrapture,” and “Capture.”

Stan guessed that the buttons controlled her camera and that each one allowed some kind of exotic image to be displayed for the visitor to watch. He thought she was pretty smart for having such a simple interface, as this was the most common problem for any web site. If the user couldn’t navigate simply and with ease, then business usually suffered.

After he shut down the program and the computer, Stan got up and wandered back into the living room. He kept hearing strange noises in the house. They sounded like muffled screams, but he couldn’t be certain, as these old Victorians were known to take on a life of their own after many years. Stan found Mrs. Redips sitting in an armchair by the window. She was asleep, sitting at attention, and she held a slip of paper in her hand. He touched her shoulder and she jumped awake. “Oh, Mister Lawton! You frightened me! Did you finish?”

“Yes, I think you’ll be able to conduct your commerce now,” said Sam, trying to look business-like, but inside, he was brimming with expectation.

“I want to thank you by giving you this special password,” said the lovely dark woman, handing Sam the slip of paper. “Of course, I will also pay you for your work on the computer, but I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until I can collect some new accounts. This password will let you visit my web site, where you can see how I make my living. I believe you’ll be pleasantly surprised.” She smiled, once again, in what Sam believed to be a provocative manner, and she stood up. Then, in a burst of gratitude, she hugged Sam around the shoulders.

226 He could feel her large breasts against his thin chest, and he felt her mouth as it moved against his right ear and whispered, “Come visit me, Mister Lawton. I want to enrapture you.” *** Sam stopped at the local Von’s to get a six-pack before heading to his apartment. This was going to be a night of fantasy for him, and he wanted to enjoy it as he would any other big event. To him, this was the World Series of Sex and the Superbowl of Seduction. There could be no better combination than computer technology and a beautiful, alluring woman.

The web site was the same as he had seen it inside Mrs. Redips’ house. He put in the password and he was given access into the web-like environment with the three buttons. Sipping at his brew, he decided to push each button in order, despite what the woman had whispered in his ear about being enraptured. He put his cursor on the Love button and double-clicked his mouse.

Onto his screen came the beautiful widow, seductively walking to the center of his screen and sitting down. There seemed to be a funnel of what looked to be fuzzy material all around her. In effect, she was seated inside a grotto made of cotton-like, grayish material that curled all around her body and gradually receded into the back of the dark room. She looked out at him and smiled. He could see the moisture on her violet lips, and his penis immediately came to life. He was, after all, still a virgin, and this kind of activity was something he was not used to experiencing.

As a teacher, he kept away from the porno sites on the Internet, as he wanted to serve as a role model for his students. But this was something different.

227 “Love is what we all crave, is it not?” Mrs. Redips asked, letting her tongue play over her lips. The camera pulled back to expose her plunging neckline and black skirt that was slit provocatively up both sides of her thighs. “I know you have searched all your life for love, and I am here to give it to you,” she said, standing up and letting the front of her gown fall over her breasts to expose two perfectly round and pink nipples that were slightly indented on the tips.

Stan was also standing up, in a part of his body that made him uncomfortable, and he wondered what this woman’s motive was. Was she simply a temptress who made money off lonely men’s fantasies? Or, was she up to something else, perhaps more sinister in nature? Sam couldn’t get those muffled screams out of his head.

“I am here for all of you men or women without a woman.

I know there are thousands of you, sitting behind your monitors, perhaps physically deformed or imperfect in some way, but your heart is still beating, your body is still craving, and your mind is still looking for intimacy! I am that intimacy for all you men and women who need, need, and need some more!”

The gown slid to the floor, revealing a body that was both sensuous and softly alluring. The mound of soft hair below her tightly flat stomach moved slowly as she shifted her strong legs back and forth in what seemed to Stan to be an exotic dance of some sort.

“Please hit enrapture,” purred the nude woman, and Stan, his hand visibly shaking, double-clicked on the center button. He wondered what this next level would bring, but he was also beginning to feel a widening anxiety creep over him.

228 The transformation was immediate. One moment he was alone in his room, sitting in front of his computer, the next moment he was splayed out on a gigantic web, feeling the sticky binding of the strands of silky goo all over his naked body. Yes, he was naked. This was not virtual reality, but how was this physically possible?

What kind of phenomenal hypnotic or other mechanism did this woman have over her viewers? Stan kept shaking his head as if he could snap himself out of this stupendous nightmare, but the vision was as real as it got.

He saw that he was not alone on this tangled web. Two other captives were held enthralled on the sticky and intricately woven strands, and he could see their bodies wriggling, like worms on a hook, on other parts of the gigantic net. About twenty-five yards to his left was a man, a fat and disgustingly hairy fellow, who was screaming out in panic. “Help! What the fuck? Get me outta here!” The tendrils of the web were wrapped all over his huge body like ropes.

About the same distance to his right was a woman, a long and gangly lady, who kept writhing in her portion of the web as if she could extricate her naked body by utter sinewy power.

She said nothing, as her grotesquely skinny body slithered and wound itself deeper into the oppressive mesh.

He noted that he was not held captive by the web.

Instead, his naked body rested on top of the strands, like a wood soldier or plastic G.I. Joe, and he saw that he could even stand up and move about on the top of the web. He experimented by jumping up and down, and the web gave way under his feet like a sticky trampoline. If he weren’t so scared, he might even be having fun.

229 Suddenly, from out of a dark corner of the web, Stan saw what looked to be the same funnel of fuzzy material that the widow had been inside as he watched her earlier on the computer screen.

He could see the gray funnel vibrate, and then, exploding out of the shoot, like an enraged bull, a gigantic and hairy spider shot out, heading straight for him!

Stan’s body reacted instantaneously. It was like a physics experiment. The force of his motion and the flexibility of the web against his weight gave him propulsion upward.

As the giant, bulbously grotesque creature shot under him, Stan exhaled with relief and fell back gasping into the web.

However, the spider had not really been after him, as it was now on top of the fat man. Stan could see the bottom of the spider’s abdomen as she raised herself to spin a cocoon around the fat man. It was the red, hourglass shape—the symbol of the Black Widow Spider!

But, looking more carefully, Stan could see that the head of this five-foot-tall spider was not the head with eight eyes of the Widow Spider. No, this head was that of Mrs. Redips, complete with her violet lips and strands of raven hair!

Mrs. Redips. Redips? Stan spelled the word backwards: spider! Stan was locked inside a Kafkaesque nightmare, and as he watched the Widow go through her routine of injecting the neurotoxic venom, mixed with digestive juices, into the wriggling and screaming fat man, he recalled his knowledge of this particular spider. She did this to her prey so that the deadly cocktail would eventually break down the body’s cellular structure and become edible for a midnight snack. The spider returned to the meal later and simply sucked up the protein juices, leaving an empty, phantom-like, gray shell of death.

230 The eight long, spindly and hairy legs of Mrs. Redips encircled the fat man in a deadly embrace, as her huge, black abdomen excreted a web of death all around his fat form. His screaming gradually subsided, and then Stan heard what he had heard inside the woman’s Victorian mansion. It was the muffled scream of a victim’s last seconds of life.

After watching the same ritual of consummate food preparation that the nightmarish spider performed on the gangly woman, Stan expected to be the next victim.

Instead, the spider retreated to her funneled domain on the far side of the web where she waited in the darkness.

Stan tried to figure out what his role was in this macabre scene. If he weren’t a morsel for her ravenous appetite, then why was he there?

As he stared down at his shriveled penis, suspended between his legs like a dead insect, awareness came upon him. If he weren’t on the web to be her food, then he must be there for love!

Somehow, he knew his purpose, and he immediately sprang to life.

He began by grabbing cords of the spider’s web and wrapping them around his arm, as one would wrap an electric cord or a rope to be put away. But instead of putting the strands away, he used them to design different and more intricately woven sections of web on the tapestry that was the Widow’s domain. After completing about three, fifteen-foot-square sections of this new design, Stan began to pluck the strings of these sections, as if he were playing a stringed instrument of some kind, a harp or a guitar, and, sure enough, he could feel the vibrations through his bare feet, and he could even hear the melody play into the air, like a dark angel’s voice, calling his mate, the monster from Hell.

231 His mechanized inspiration worked. The funnel at the end of the web began vibrating, and the Black Widow darted out of her lair. The spider knew something had changed in her web, as this web was an extension of her life force, just as the Internet had become the extension of Stan’s reality. As she approached each of the sections of her web that Stan had changed, her body began to vibrate and shake convulsively. Was she afraid? Was she angry?

Stan couldn’t figure out exactly which it was.

However, Stan was able to get a better look at this creature. Not only did she have the head of Mrs. Redips, she also had her boobs! Below her thorax, bulging out of the hairy black shape of her arachnid body were those same, beautiful pink breasts! And, to his utmost horror, as she turned around on the web, exposing her voluminous bottom, Stan could see that she also had the tuft of silky black hair that covered her vagina! It was just below the red hourglass, the ever-present symbol of the Black Widow’s menacing reality.

Stan made up his mind. She must be shivering from passion. As he went to the last section of web that he had designed, and began plucking the sticky cords of love, he could see the Widow’s smile! She turned toward him, continuing to grin, and she began to vibrate once more, this time with a much more pulsating and spontaneous rhythm.

Her black abdomen throbbed, her breasts heaved, and her voice rang out, “Love me! Love me!” she screamed and began to charge toward him on her eight hairy legs. In that moment between her oncoming frenzy and their first meeting, Stan remembered that the female Black Widow would sometimes devour her mate after she had her way with him. With this in mind, just as the spider came upon him, Stan jumped. He also had a full erection, and when the soft mound of Mrs. Redips’ rear

232 end was exposed, Stan quickly descended, and he plunged his own fleshly dagger into the awaiting moist confines of her vagina. As a virgin, the sudden sensation of her tight womb of passion made him ejaculate almost immediately.

He felt his own skinny body shiver and vibrate as he spun his own sticky web into the lonely Widow’s body. *** Stan came to, naked and shivering, in front of his computer monitor. The room was humid, like a jungle, and on the screen was the same interface, with the three buttons. Was this all a virtual phantasm? This woman had software that could spin quite a yarn! She was worth millions of dollars. As he searched for his clothes, Stan realized he hadn’t pushed the last button, the Capture button. Tugging on his teeshirt, he clicked his mouse cursor on the final button. But nothing happened. The screen remained silent. Stan waited for an hour, but there was stillness in the room.

When he arrived at the Victorian mansion of the widow, Mrs. Redips, Stan had his plan all worked out. He would offer to manage her web game for her and get it listed on all the major game sites. He didn’t know how she did it, but this virtual reality simulation somehow was able to enter the brain and create a fantasy of immense and realistic proportions. They would become millionaires in no time.

Again, the big violet door creaked open, by itself, and Stan warily stepped inside. The house was dark, and there seemed to be nobody there, so he walked quietly into the back room, where the computer was.

However, the computer had vanished, and in its place was a door in the wall against which the computer had stood. Why not? He had come this far, so he opened the door.

233 Inside was a long cavern that led far into the darkness. As Stan walked inside, he suddenly felt the presence of someone else in the closet with him. He took out a lighter he had from a Math Teachers’ Convention in San Jose, and he lit it.

The bulbous appendage sac handing from above was quivering. As it began to vibrate, a long, slow slit erupted along the length of the cocoon, and, suddenly, hundreds of foot-long spiders spat out of the opening. They covered his body in an instant, and some of them covered his face.

As Stan turned and ran out of the closet, the spiders hanging from his body like crabs, he tripped on the spider chair and fell to the floor. The baby spiders were all over him, and he could see, to his utmost horror, that each one of them had a human head, and many of these heads looked exactly like him! The spiders could spin, and they spun around and around his body, weaving a tight and captivating web of doom.

From out of closet, Stan could see Mrs. Redips, in her human and voluptuous form, as she swayed her hips and stepped over to him. He could now barely see her from within his crypt of cobwebs, but he could hear her, and this is what she said, “Thanks so very much, Mister Lawton.

You see, I could not have reproduced my little family without you. As a virgin, you are the most potent male available, and this was the only way I could capture you. I am sorry, but you will not be able to see your progeny grow and thrive in their new existence, but be certain that we will always be here, full of love and desire, awaiting the next reproductive season, the next season of the Black Widow’s Web of Love.”

234

If You Put Lipstick on a Witch I don’t like to believe that the possible Vice President of the United States, who is just a heartbeat away from being President, is a witch. I really don’t. Besides, I was married to her sister, Margie Fallon, who is probably the most beautifully loving woman there ever was. However, I now have incontrovertible proof that Rachel Fallon, Governor of Alaska, and Vice President nominee for the Republican Party, is a bone fide, sure as shootin’, potion brewin’, broom ridin’, spell castin’ witch!

How does one become transformed from a clean, wholesome, hockey mom and politician, into a witch?

That’s why I’m telling you this story, isn’t it? Now that I’m one of the many unemployed in America, having lost my Alaska State Trooper’s job because Rachel got me fired, I have a lot of time on my hands. You know, the real reason I got fired was not because I was mean to the Fallon family. No, I was not “mean” to them. They simply got caught disobeying the law, the law I swore to protect and uphold, and I was just doing my job is all. Rachel’s husband, Brad, the big-shot oil company supervisor? I stopped him several times for drunk driving. Finally, I had to give him the ticket and take him into Juneau. Wasilla just doesn’t have the facilities to stow drunk drivers of his stature, and I thought I was doing him a favor. Lo and

235 behold, Rachel calls my wife and starts going on about how I was breaking up her marriage! I was just bringing in a drunk to keep the streets safe, and I was breaking up her marriage. Of course, Rachel got everything covered up-including the DUI ticket I wrote--so all he’s got on his record is the DUI he got when he was 20. Believe me; he should have about fifteen of them! Hell, the whole family should be busted for practicing the devil’s business! But, I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I? I also broke-up a party being thrown by Rachel’s teenage daughter, Melanie, 17, when Rachel was off flying around the state campaigning for governor. Melanie and her friends were all wasted and playing “medicine cabinet roulette” with her parent’s drugs. Once again, I was just doing my duty as a law enforcement officer. And, once again, I got the wrath of Rachel Fallon. That’s when Margie got scared.

See, when Rachel sees that somebody’s on her “hate me list,” as she likes to call all those she thinks are against her, she doesn’t stop until she gets rid of them, one by one. Margie knows her sister probably better than anybody in the Fallon family, and I suppose that’s the main reason the Republican Party has kept her under virtual lock and key from the press of the down under states. Margie would tell it all, and so would I and I guess that’s really what led Rachel to get forced into her present witch status.

You see, it’s not all about me. I’m just one in a long line of folks in Alaska who got steamrolled by the Rachel Fallon political snowmachine. She would knock somebody down she didn’t like and replace them with one of her school chums. Didn’t matter if they were qualified or not, nope, if Rachel didn’t like you for some reason, you were soon history. It also didn’t matter if you were Democrat or

236 Republican. Hell, there are more Republicans in Alaska, so there are more of them as targets for Rachel.

Let me explain something to you about modern-day Alaska. People who don’t come from here think it’s the last frontier, the last place you can be who you want to be without Big Government breathing down your neck. That’s why we have so many Republicans, Independents and Libertarians living up here. Up until a couple years ago, you could smoke weed in your own home, up to an ounce, and nobody said boo. Then, the Christian Right took over, and pot became illegal, and we even had ourselves a Supreme Court case on the issue. You know, the kid who held up the “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” banner at the parade across from his Juneau high school, after school hours, and the Supremes decided to take the case and rule on it?

Said the kid had no freedom of speech rights, even though the words on that sign could have meant a lot of other stuff, or the fact that it was the “principle of First Amendment Rights” he did it for in the first place. No, they said his free speech was lost because he was “advocating drug use in his speech,” and this was not protected speech.

Well, if I had a nickel for every teenager and arrested adult who was high on some kind of drug in this state, I would be one wealthy, unemployed state trooper.

Why, a trooper wastes more state taxpayers’ money arresting kids for pot than chasing down real criminals—like the one in the governor’s mansion and her cronies--but I digress once more. Let me get back to my story about how Vice Presidential candidate, darling of the media, and lovely former Miss Alaska Runner Up, Rachel Fallon, resorted to witchcraft to get her way.

Rachel was always a perky one in our lives. She could fill up any room with a bunch of guys swarming all around her, wanting to be close to her, wanting to listen to her

237 folksy tales about hunting moose, riding her husband’s snowmachine, and taking on the high school state champions in Women’s basketball in Fairbanks. These men fell in love with her, just like Brad Fallon did when he was 23 and they eloped. Brad has been an oil field supervisor for over 18 years, and he only moved out of management to get rid of the “conflict of interest charges” when his wife became governor. He still does business for BP, and everybody knows it around here, and he makes a ton of money as a “consultant” to a lot of little pork barrel projects, including the infamous “bridge to nowhere.” See, he’s part Eskimo on his mother’s side, and he has exclusive salmon fishing rights that nobody else has who isn’t Eskimo, and he is one tough hombre.

He’s a champion snowmachine racer, and he’s won the Tesoro Iron Dog Championship, but he broke his arm last year when he was thrown 70 feet from his vehicle. He’s also a pilot with his own aircraft, a Piper Super Cub, which he used to fly his wife all around the state during her run for the governorship of our state.

Brad Fallon figures into this story, and so does her former preacher, Toti Walutu, who was the one who really turned Rachel into a practicing witch. Now I’ll tell you how it all started . . .

I was in my cruiser in Wasilla, and Rachel was then just the mayor of our town of a little over 9,000 folks, when I stopped in front of the All Pentecostal Brotherhood Church, on Bridgewood Road. I wanted to check on a report of some noise, so I parked my car and walked through the snow and up into the little white shack of a structure. I sat in the back. Nobody seemed to be too loud to me. Some guy with dark, curly hair was speaking from the podium, and Rachel and her pastor, Brother Walutu, originally from Kenya, were listening to him.

238 “Yes, and these Jews who do not convert, as I have, will all be punished when the Lord returns in the Rapture!

Why do you think God has punished them all these years with terrorists and violence in their midst? They have not seen the Light! They have turned from the One, the true Light of our Redeemer, Lord Jesus!”

About fifteen people in the church squawked, “Amen!”

Rachel and Brother Walutu just sat there, these sly, catate-the-canary grins on their faces.

This guest preacher, who was a Jew for Jesus, finally finished his pitch, and he sat down next to the black preacher man.

Rachel then got up, brushed off her mayor’s navy blue suit, adjusted her half-glasses, and stood in front of the podium to preach to her fellow believers.

“Ever since I was a little girl, I knew I was destined for great things. Now, as mayor, my time is at hand. I, too, have seen the Light of His way. Pastor Walutu has prayed me to where I am today, along with God’s help, and he will pray me into the governorship of this great state! I know that our state will be the final place for the Rapture, and all of God’s chosen will come up here to seek salvation. I love you all, as you have seen us through our hard times, and you will share in the bounty when Jesus comes again!

Thanks for all your prayers and your support. I couldn’t have done it without you!”

I suppose we all have our Achilles’ heel, and Rachel’s was her religion. You see, when Brad was drinking pretty heavy, and she was all alone at home with the kids—two daughters and two sons—she began going to this church to listen to Pastor Walutu. Pastor Walutu always told his story of having cast out a witch back home in his country of Kenya, in Africa, by having the whole village pray at her

239 to drive her away. What did this “witch” do? Well, it seems, there were many traffic accidents at the nearby intersection, and, because Toti Walutu was not one of your big government liberals, he didn’t think putting in a traffic light would do the trick to prevent those accidents. Oh no, he knew Big Mary Tomas, who was reported to be a practitioner of voodoo and witchcraft, and she lived just across the road in a small bungalow. He marched right over there with his Bible and his big voice, and he began to shout and to pray at her until the entire village came running. Finally, the police came also, and when they broke down the door to Mary’s house, they found the largest python they had ever laid eyes on in captivity.

Brother Walutu pointed at the big snake and said, “See, she converses with the Devil himself! The police, not knowing what to do, finally shot the poor snake, and Big Mary, also seeing the writing on the wall, left that village to the catcalls and curses of the entire populace. And that’s how Pastor Walutu exorcised his first witch.

You see, up here in Alaska we are still kind of like it was in that great movie that won the Academy Award, There Will Be Blood! You have all your simple folks, union members, workers, just simple people who want to get by and do things without any big pressures of the city weighing them down. That’s what I am. But then, you’ve got these other types, like the Fallons, who think they run the place, and they’re here to lead us all to their version of the Promised Land. Whether it’s a $2,000 check from the State of Alaska to share in the oil revenues for the natural gas pipeline, or it’s a message from a Kenyan preacher that the world is coming to an end shortly and anybody who doesn’t prepare for the Rapture will be left behind, we’re all just frontier-type folks.

That’s why Rachel Fallon caught on so fast after she was nominated Vice President.

People all over America still believe in the myth of America

240 that disappeared many years ago. But, up here, we still live it. And, Rachel Fallon lives it, and she talks it just like we do. However, when somebody gets popular with the big states down there, there soon has to be a reckoning.

As governor, Rachel still belonged to Pastor Walutu’s church, and nobody really cared. However, when folks in Republican Presidential nominee Vance Pickard’s entourage got wind of Rachel’s religious fundamentalism, and they listened to some of Pastor Walutu’s sermons that could be streamed off the Internet, they sent up a contingent of public relations folks from the party to fix the “problem” as they saw it. Rachel had to be cleaned-up for the big city press, so to speak, but little did they know that they were causing one big ruckus in the religious community of Wasilla.

Vance Pickard was an old gentleman, a Vietnam War hero with white hair and a Texas drawl, and our beauty queen governor was just the match for him. She was groomed as a government reformer because she put the governor’s aircraft for sale on Ebay—so as not to waste the taxpayers’ money, don’t you know. Hell, why should she want it when her husband was a pilot and could write-off all his expenses?

Boy, they really spun a myth around our Rachel, but they made one mistake. They disrespected the pastor from Pentecostal Brotherhood Church, and he was out to seek revenge!

Everybody had heard of the Democrat’s nominee, the black Italian guy, Orazio Barna, and his pastor, Reverend Richard Wright, and the sound bite the big press got from one of his sermons about how he said, “Goddamn America, Goddamn America, Goddamn America!”

Forget about what he was saying before and after that. Those words were enough damns for most Americans, just as Rachel’s

241 new daughter, Pippin, who was born with Down’s Syndrome, was a symbol of the “cross the governor bore for Jesus,” because she had the baby even though she had an amniocentesis, and Rachel knew what the child was.

Margie said Rachel had the kid because she knew she could use her to get the Vice Presidential nomination.

Don’t believe me, ask her! When Rachel carted the kid out during the acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, I knew it was a “reality show moment” for America.

When Pastor Walutu began to lose his followers in Wasilla, the old guy kind of lost it also. I was still a trooper then and would invariably have to pick him up at the Lone Wolf Tavern out on Fallon Street (irony?) for raising hell and causing a disturbance. One night, I was taking the pastor back to his room behind the shack church of his, and he began telling me about his plan. At first, I thought it was just the jabbering of a crazy drunk, but as his voice became louder, and his bulging hazel eyes stared at me from out of the darkness in the back seat, I began to believe.

Rachel now attended the “non denominational” church near the governor’s residence in Juneau. The pastor, Rick Whitehurst, was a Presbyterian minister and former hockey player who was a far cry from the teachings of Toti Walutu. The most dramatic sermon he gave concerned giving to the poor and “sowing what we reap,” and he would never get into the Second Coming or any of the Rapture business.

He was the perfect pastor for a governor who wanted to be Vice President.

However, on an extremely cold and rudely Alaskan dark and windy night of February 12, in the governor’s mansion, and the thermometer at -40 degrees Fahrenheit,

242 Reverend Toti Walutu crept up to the window of the Fallon family residence and looked inside. Governor Fallon was practicing her acceptance speech for the Vice Presidential Nomination, and her family was sitting around her in front of the roaring fire place. Pastor Walutu, in a ragged snow suit, and looking quite deranged, began to pray at her, under his breath, as she practiced her presentation.

“Do you know how you tell a hockey mom from a pit bull?” Rachel asked. You have lost the way, and you will become the one who seeks the darkness of the soul!

Damn you, Rachel, sister of hell! From this moment, you shall be Racine, the dark mistress of black magic! You have lost your soul, and I will buy it from you! Her family leaned forward, expecting the punch line. Brad was drunk, sister Melanie was high and newly pregnant, and Topper, 22, had just got his marching orders and was headed for Iraq. They were all expecting her famous joke. Yes, you can put lipstick on the witch, but she is still a witch!

“Lipstick!” she smirked, and all was right with the world.

Rachel Fallon began her witchcraft when her husband, Brad, was spotted by one of her aides at the apartment of a young journalist from the New Republic, who was doing a story about him for her magazine. You see, Pastor Walutu not only could pray a witch out of a village, he could also pray a mayor into the governor’s mansion.

However, when that same woman leaves his church and causes him ruin, the good reverend can do the opposite.

He can pray a governor and vice presidential nominee into a witch.

Her first potion was a concoction of moose’s blood, owl’s beak, and the canines of an arctic wolf. She ground it up in a blender and carried it with her inside her purse out to the apartment of Sue Wolman, the 22-year-old journalist

243 and husband seducer. In the bedroom, as Brad and Sue were comingling between the sheets, Rachel entered, said a few words—a speaking in tongues, if you will—and poured the contents of the vial all over their two naked bodies.

At once, Brad was transformed into a toad and the young woman, a mouse. Rachel picked them up off the bed, stared at them as they wriggled in her hands to get free, plopped them into her purse, and then shut the clasp. No longer did Rachel “the piranha” Fallon have to fire anybody. She could, instead, transform them into a more docile form of nature. And, when she thought they were punished enough, she could bring them back to life, making them forget their love affair with each other forever!

She believed she could even take over the presidency, if she needed to, and why shouldn’t she?

What was to stop her from changing Vance Pickard into something more appropriate—an elephant, perhaps, or maybe an old gray donkey, for irony’s sake?

So, that’s how Rachel Fallon became a witch. And me? I am now employed, working for Democratic Presidential nominee, Orazio Barna. You see, as a youth, Orazio lived in Ethiopia, where his elderly father came from, and he believed in Black Magic, Voodoo, and all the rest. It’s true.

And it’s a bigger secret than Rachel Fallon’s witchcraft.

And Pastor Toti Walutu? Oh, he used to be a follower of Emperor Haile Selassie back in Ethiopia. Orazio’s mother, a black Ethiopian who fell in love with an occupying Italian officer by the name of Giuseppe Barna, was also a powerful witch of the highest order. In fact, she raised her son, Orazio, along with his older brother, Toti Barna, to be followers of the great Emperor who was victorious over the Fascist Italian army. To them, he was a god on earth, a man to be worshipped with all the wonders of Black Magic

244 and hallucinogenic potions and spells that could work wonders in this dead man’s walking world of greed. They were Rastafarians, smokers of the ganja, healers of the sick and majestic lords over all of Nature’s wonders!

When their father died, the two brothers, Toti and Orazio, came to America with their mother to start a new life.

Orazio went to all the best schools and graduated from Harvard Law—the American Dream comes true. Toti, still a magical fellow, with wanderlust in his veins, headed out where all the great seekers of adventure ended up—Jack London, Joe Juneau, John Muir and Brad and Rachel Fallon —Toti wanted to preach to them all and gain their acceptance. To do this, he lied to them, and spoke about the religion they all understood.

However, when his brother back home entered politics, and he saw Mayor Rachel Fallon walk into his church, he decided to help his brother to the presidency of America.

This election year will be quite a battle, won’t it? But, it’s always what goes on behind the scenes that makes me excited—it always has been that way. Who has the better propagandist?

Who has the better speech writer? Who has the better witch or warlock? As I watch the two brothers, Toti and Orazio, doing their crazy chants in front of the hotel mirrors, smoking their reefer, and smiling those toothy grins—I can’t help but believe our warlocks will prevail in tonight’s debate.

“I know what I shall do, my brother!” laughs Toti, putting an arm lazily around his slender brother’s athletic shoulders and pulling him toward him.

“What? Toti, don’t fool with me now. What are you thinking?” says Orazio, ever the politician looking for the upper hand.

245 “I think I will turn her into a pig. Yes, that’s it! You can put lipstick on a pig, but she’s still a witch!”

The brothers fall into each other’s arms, as Bob Marley sings from the blaring CD speakers: Them belly full but we hungry.

A hungry mob is a angry mob.

A rain a-fall but the dirt it tough; A pot a-cook but the food no 'nough.

You're gonna dance to JAH music, dance.

We're gonna dance to JAH music, dance.

Forget your troubles and dance.

Forget your sorrow and dance.

Forget your sickness and dance.

Forget your weakness and dance.

Cost of living get so high, Rich and poor, they start a cry.

Now the weak must get strong.

They say, "Oh, what a tribulation."

And I can’t help laughing along with them. I guess I am on a contact high; besides, Margie is coming up to New York to see me again. We’re getting back together. And, guess what? She wants to have a kid. I guess even with the economy going bust, we still can have things to look forward to, can’t we? I sure hope so! In fact, I’m banking on it. In a piggy bank, with lipstick, of course!

246

What We Talk About When We Talk About Death We were over at our closest friends’ house when Larry Woodman, he’s the husband, began telling us about his mother’s funeral. Well, it wasn’t exactly about a funeral, in the usual sense of the term, it was more as if Larry (an engineer) were describing the way one performs a proper hanging if one is a hang man (which his great-grandfather once was, as a matter of fact, in Tombstone, Arizona). My wife (once a nurse for thirteen years, mostly in Connecticut) was, at first, appalled by Larry’s description, but then she made it her cause célèbre to try to stop us all from continuing our discourse, as, at one point that evening, it was becoming quite macabre.

“Cremation is, in fact, only one process in a series of events that took place with my mother’s body. Cremation is where the body is prepared for final disposition. Over a period of 2 to 3 hours the body is transformed by intense heat (1,600 – 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit) to a state of small skeletal fragments and not fine ash as some people believe. I was allowed to watch the gentleman place my mother’s body inside the oven and crank it up to the necessary temperature. In fact, he asked me if I would like to ‘do the honors,’ and I did. After the cremation process is complete, the cremated remains are removed

247 from the cremation chamber and placed in a tray for cooling. They are then processed to their final reduced consistency. The processed cremated remains are generally placed in a small cardboard box or other temporary container at the crematorium. Most cremated remains weigh between 4 - 8 pounds.”

My wife, Rachel, who is also Jewish, was completely aghast at this point in Larry’s narrative. It’s one thing to have an outlaw’s neck being snapped in front of your virtual eyes, but this cremation process was a little bit too close to Auschwitz for my wife’s comfort. “How can you be so matter-of-fact, Larry? My God, she was your mother, for Christsakes!”

I’m afraid I was getting a bit bored by the debate, and so I tried removing Marsha’s (Larry’s wife) Japanese wooden zori sandals with my foot. I needed juxtaposition to this entire ungodly conversation, so I continued the discussion with a bit of historical information of my own, which I had Googled earlier on my BlackBerry, “Henryk Tauber claimed that a certain Capo (named August) expected bodies to be cremated at 5-7 minutes per body. Tauber also claimed that 4 million were killed at Auschwitz. The 5-7 minutes/body rate is ludicrous, and can only have been mentioned by Tauber to ‘validate’ the claim that 10,00012,000 per day were cremated, as summarized in the Soviet Commission Report on Auschwitz (USSR-008). An oven, cremating 8.5-12 bodies (at 5-7 minutes/body) every hour, would then have been capable of cremating 178.5-252 bodies in 21 hours, and 52 ovens would then have cremated 9,282-13,104 in 21 hours. Hence, it would appear that the Soviet claim of 10,000-12,000 per day is based on the Tauber testimony, as is the 4 million claim.

However, the evidence indicates that Tauber willingly testified to cremation rates and a murder toll that reflected

248 a pre-determined Soviet distortion.

Since the Sonderkommando slept together in dormitories, and were capable of counting the approximate number of bodies cremated during each shift, they would have established that nowhere near 10,000 were cremated every day in the ovens, nowhere near 279,000 per month average, nowhere near 4 million total. Thus, Henryk Tauber committed perjury on behalf of the Soviet propagandists.”

“See, Jerry understands my point perfectly,” said Larry.

Rachel was staring me down so hard I could feel the hairs on my body begin to twist into a pattern that spelled out an old quotation from Oliver North during his Iran-Contra testimony, “I would have promised those terrorists a trip to Disneyland if it would have gotten the hostages released. I thank God they were satisfied with the missiles, and we didn't have to go to that extreme."

Thank God my friends couldn’t see me naked. It would have been quite embarrassing, as Oliver North now has a best-selling novel out. I fancy myself a writer as well, and we writers always need friends in high places!

“I never knew you felt that way about the Holocaust, Jerry!” Rachel screamed at me, and I could see down her throat into a little room where Kafka still cries daily. “If you keep talking this way, I swear, I’m going to get a divorce!”

It was then Marsha, who is Dutch, entered the fray, “My parents were in the underground in Holland fighting the Nazis! It was a good idée at the time,” she said. Marsha always pisses my wife off when she says the word “idea.”

Marsha always mispronounces it as “idée.”

249 “Let’s not get into your parents now,” said Rachel, who was still throwing knives at me by the bushel load, “can’t you see I’m angry with Jerry?”

Did I mention we were watching a DVD movie called Max, about the artistic early life of Adolph Hitler? The guy who plays Hitler in the film, Noah Taylor (an Australian by birth) chose that moment to spring out of the spinning DVD (our friends still possess a TV with rabbit ears; thus, it is prone to exhibit Alice in Wonderland type shenanigans) and enter our conversation. “I got my inner motivation to play Hitler as a young, starving artist from a photograph I saw of him as an eight-year-old school boy,” said Noah, tossing another water balloon at Marsha’s other flaming Jap zori. “Did you know that Hitler was a vegetarian, who neither smoked nor drank? However, he was known to play with matches when he was a kid in kindergarten.”

I, who cannot stand actors who act out of context, (besides, I much preferred John Cusack’s role as Max, the one-armed Jewish art dealer), immediately opened the DVD player, and Noah Taylor was sent spinning back into the warm confines of the burning digits, like his biblical namesake, who, in a drunken stupor, was sent back out from his ark, into the world, after The Flood.

I then saw that it was starting to rain outside, and this was enough to scare me a bit (in light of our recent visit by Noah). I wanted the evening to end on a happier note, so I suggested that we all sing a Hebrew round. The guy who sang it first was in Bergen-Belsen in 1943, before it became an “official” Concentration Camp. It was rather like a summer camp in hell, where, each evening, Yisrael Goldberger, a friendly and musical lad of 25, went around to the different cabins and got the inmates to start this

250 singing round, similar to the way we all sing, “Row, row, row your boat.” Yisrael’s song was called “Shalom Cheverim,” which means, “Peace, friends, till we meet again.”

“Sha-lom cheverim, Sha-lom cheverim, Sha-lom, shalom!”

“Le-hit-ra-ot, le-hit-ra-ot, Sha-lom, sha-lom!”

I sang first, then Rachel, then Larry and finally (we thought) Marsha began her round. However, not to be outdone, the cast from Max stopped their acting on the screen to enter the round—even the young, aspiring artist, Adolph—and it was quite a moving moment.

You see, whenever I can get my wife to sing in Hebrew, it kind of cleans the slate—so to speak—and I was certain I would “get lucky” after we went back home. We could (all alone in our own bed) perform what the French (not a very popular nationality these days) call “the little death,” la petite morte.

251

The Sunset Unlimited Prologue Bill heard the pounding at about three in the morning. It sounded like someone was hitting something against the bulkhead walls, and he got up, put on his robe, and went out into the passageway. The sound was coming from down near the coffee maker where the sleeper car attendant’s room was located. Bill, a bit warily, walked toward the commotion at the other end.

They were traveling fast, and the car was rocking to and fro like an old ship on the high seas. The flashing lights from the train’s windows were passing over his body as he crept forward. Finally, Bill reached the door to Mary Lou’s room.

The shade was drawn shut with the Velcro edges, but he could still hear the pounding on the sides of the compartment. What the hell? Bill thought to himself, as the sound became increasingly louder, until it was almost deafening. Bill was afraid she was being hurt, so he pulled at the handle on the metal door. It would not budge.

Suddenly, the pounding and movement stopped.

The shade came apart, and Bill could see inside.

She was straddling him, and her big breasts were heaving up and down, and her ass was pounding him against the

252 side of the bed. He was seated on the floor, and his gigantic black cock was thrust up and into the passion between her dark brown legs. As she bounced, she threw her raven-haired head back and laughed, and that’s when she saw him. Bill pulled away from the door’s window but not before he saw that she had smiled back at him! As he ran, tripping over himself down the passageway, he was thinking, Oh, my God! What have we here? It looks like our little sleeper car has a little Spanish cure for insomnia.

I just might take her up on that remedy tomorrow night! *** Bill Daniels, high-powered software executive, stepped into line at the Amtrak station in New Orleans. He and his wife, Arlene, a college English teacher, could not have children, and so, as a way to get to know each other better and discuss their options, they were going to take the final ride of the Sunset Limited, the train that had journeyed across the United States for over thirty years, but since the current recession, Congress had failed to fund Amtrak, and so this route was being totally cut from Amtrak’s schedule.

Bill has maintained his love affair with trains ever since he was a boy growing up in Pennsylvania, where Penn Station became his home-away-from-home and every Christmas saw a new car for his Lionel train set. He and his father, Jake, kept a giant track layout in the basement of their house, where father and son would reenact Old West train robberies, transport weapons for World Wars, and make perilous trips across the simulated desserts, forests, lakes and mountains of America.

The demise of the railroad in America hit Bill really hard.

It was if a best friend had died, and now he and his wife were going to ride a funeral procession aboard the Sunset Limited. Bill told his wife, on the evening they were

253 planning the trip, “This is the beginning of the end, honey.

Even though Europe and Asia have put a lot of money into their trains, our government has decided for us that travel by train is obsolete. What a fucking waste!”

Arlene put her arms around her tall husband’s waist and pulled him toward her. “It’s all about speed, Bill, you should know that. We keep going faster and faster to get nowhere. E-waste from computers, wars for oil, it all amounts to an obsession with speed. My college students are never prepared to do any critical thinking because they’re so used to the speed of the Internet. They have forgotten that reading requires in-depth thinking and analysis. If they don’t get the answer in five seconds on Google, it’s not worth the attempt.”

“Yeah, I want this trip to be an exclamation mark against our government. I’m going to send them all the digital photos and the journal that I will be keeping so they’ll know what we’ll all be missing from our country’s history.”

Bill picked up the worn, blue-striped railroad engineer hat from his coffee table and pulled it down on his head. “This will be our final ride, sweetheart, and we’re not going out without a fight!” *** “Good morning, Mrs. and Mrs. Daniels,” said the sleeper car attendant, whose nametag said “Mary Lou,” but Bill and Arlene found out later she was from Spain, originally-Barcelona, to be exact--and she pronounced the city’s name with the Castilian “th” sound. Bill noticed that the white shirt beneath her black uniform jacket was quite fully packed, and she reminded him of the actress, Penelope Cruz.

254 “I’ll pull your beds down when you go to dinner,” Mary Lou said, the dimples in her cheeks showing like ripe apples when she smiled. Bill made a mental note to try to be nearby some night when Maria Louisa pulled down the beds.

Bill had paid for the biggest suite in the train, and they had a shower inside the room, two beds that pulled out, and a wonderful view of the passing scenery. “We won’t need to use the Viewing Car this time, baby,” said Bill, hugging his wife. The last time they traveled by train they went by coach, and the only good observation to be had was to use the viewing car for that purpose.

“I think I’ll take a shower before dinner,” said Bill, putting up the two suitcases into the overhead holds. Arlene pulled the drapes shut so no wandering passenger would get a peek at her husband’s nice derrière, and Bill shucked off all his clothes.

“This will be a great trip!” said Bill, as he stepped inside the shower. Bill turned the handle so it was right in the center of the hot and cold. When the stream of scalding water hit his body, as he pulled out the lever, Bill let out a scream in spite of himself. “Shit! What the fuck?” he exclaimed and immediately turned off the faucet.

Dripping like a wet dog, Bill pulled a large towel around him and pushed the attendant’s button. A friendly chime sounded throughout the sleeper car.

In about two minutes, Mary Lou was at their cabin door. “You rang, Sir?” she asked, and Arlene let her inside.

“I tried to take a shower,” said Bill, keeping a firm grip on the red towel around his waist, “but all I got was a burn from the constant stream of hot water.”

255 The attendant stepped inside the shower, turned on the handle, and felt the stream. “I don’t feel it,” she said, turning the handle from hot to cold and then back again.

“It seems to work fine, Mr. Daniels.

I’m sorry it happened.”

“That’s okay, I guess I might have twisted it too much or something. Thanks anyway, Maria,” he said and noticed that she smiled when he used the Spanish word for her name. “I’ll let my wife try it first,” he added, smiling at Arlene.

Arlene was able to shower without a problem, but when Bill stepped back inside to have his turn, the same thing happened. All he got was a scalding, burning stream of water on his skin. Arlene suggested he take it up with the conductor, and Bill agreed to do just that.

Bill and Arlene wore their engineer suits to dinner the first night, and the folks in the dining car chuckled as they passed them to their seats, rocking and rolling with the movement of the train speeding down the tracks. The waitress, a young Black woman named Bertha, who was both ambidextrous and a tight wire walker, rolled up to their table and put down salads and an assortments of dressings in plastic packages.

“I’ll be with you in a minute,” she said, winked, and took off to another table.

Meanwhile, the dining car supervisor, a huge Filipino named Charles, escorted a couple to the Daniels’ table.

They were in their early seventies, Bill guessed, and they smiled over at their fellow travelers as they spread their napkins on their laps.

“We’re riding to the end of the line. How ‘bout you folks?” asked the gentleman, a portly and balding fellow with a nervous twitch in his left eye.

256 “Yes, we’re here for the duration as well,” said Bill. “Can’t you tell from our outfits? This is going to be one of the last train rides Americans will possibly ever experience.”

“The name’s Walt Iverson and this here is my wife of twenty-five years, Marilee. We both worked for the United Parcel Service for thirty years, and that’s where I found this sweet little package,” he chuckled, and the rosycheeked, gray-haired lady at his side raised her eyebrows and smiled.

Walt wore bib overalls and his Marilee had on what looked to be a home-made gingham print dress of some kind. Bill thought this was also a bit of vanishing Americana, which was quite apropos for such a journey.

“We were told by some authority that our reward is coming when we arrive in the City of Angels,” said Walt, a twinkle glinting in his dark brown eyes.

“Reward? What kind of reward?” asked Bill.

“Honey, perhaps the Iversons want to keep it private,” said Arlene, gently prodding Bill on his elbow.

“Oh, that’s okay. We don’t mind. We’re kinda proud that we came into the money when we did. In fact, everyone on this train has won a prize to be redeemed when they get off at the end of the line,” said Walt.

“We call it the train bound for glory!” said Marilee, repeating something she probably heard at church.

“Everyone? Why, we haven’t won anything. How do you suppose we were allowed to get tickets?” asked Bill, curious about the whole matter. He was also thinking he and Arlene might be the victims of some kind of practical joke. “Do you know Rudy Walker, by any chance?” Rudy was Bill’s boss at Thor Software, and he didn’t doubt that

257 the old fart might go to such extremes to put one over on Bill. In fact, Rudy thought Bill’s infatuation with trains and the vanishing American landscape was quite fatuous.

Rudy flew everywhere by jet, and he drove a huge Lincoln Navigator. Bill called him “Fifty-Cent” behind his back.

Bill’s little Toyota Prius looked like a diminutive bug parked next to Rudy’s monster in the company’s parking lot.

“Rudy Walker? No, I don’t believe I do. We do know the Walkers in Galveston. Galveston Texas,” said Walt.

“No, that’s not the one,” said Bill, and they stopped talking long enough to order their meals from Bertha. Bill took some pictures of the old couple and then he ordered the Cornish game hen with yellow rice, and his wife ordered the fish—Falupia, Tilapia or Palupia, some such farmed aquatic delight.

Bill was able to corner the head conductor after dinner. He was a tall Black man by the name of Richard, and he was about Bill’s age. As they talked, Richard kept fiddling with his two-way, and this annoyed Bill.

“My shower seems to be malfunctioning. Strange thing is, it only gets hot when I’m in the shower,” said Bill, feeling a bit awkward just explaining his dilemma.

“Well, you know the old saying,” said Richard, his white teeth flashing, “if you can’t stand the heat, then get out of the shower,” and he chuckled at his own joke.

“I know it sounds ridiculous, but I was planning on enjoying my trip and taking tons of photos. Actually, what I really want to do is to write up this big report and send it to the government. We shouldn’t be letting the railways go the way of the Dodo bird. We need this kind of travel for our serenity,” explained Bill.

258 Richard looked concerned. He hitched up his wide black belt, tucked in his white shirt on the sides, and adjusted his shiny-billed conductor’s cap. “This train’s on its last run, Mr. Daniels. There’s no saving it from destruction.

That’s why all the people on it are here to receive their rewards at the end of the line. Including me and every staff member under me,” he added, staring intently down at his shoes, as if they held an answer to some mystery that was beyond him. “Funny thing, though, we don’t quite know what all we’re going to receive. The boss just told us to get on board and finish our trip.”

“That’s quite interesting,” said Bill, warming to this subject instantly, “I was just going to ask you about that. We were never told about any reward for riding on this train.

Why do you suppose that is?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t be knowin’ anything about that, Sir,” said the conductor, turning to go. “I’ll check on your shower,” he added, hurrying down the center of the car and pushing on the red door opener inside a panel indention.

The pneumatic door whooshed open, and he was through, like some kind of tall, dark spirit. *** The next morning, as they were pulling into Houston, Bill and Arlene had breakfast with another sleeper car resident, one Roscoe Lee Hayward, from Los Angeles.

Roscoe told them he was thirty-seven and a music producer and musician who had been in New Orleans to see if he could become musically inspired to write some new compositions. His specialties were blues, jazz, and be-bop, and he wore baggy jeans and a teeshirt with a faded color shot of Jimi Hendrix on the front, but his blond hair was cut short, his baby face was tan, and he had only one earring. However, much to Bill’s chagrin, Roscoe’s

259 clean-shaven, handsomely engaging attitude impressed Arlene, it seemed, because she leaned forward when he spoke, showing the dickwad some of her cleavage, and she was held in rapt attention by his words. Serves me right, thought Bill, thinking about his little escapade with the Spanish sleeper car attendant.

“I won this trip after I chanted for thirty-seven hours straight,” said Roscoe, his blue eyes holding fast on Arlene’s. “I belong to a sect with over a million members in North America. You could never tell we were a sect if you saw us on the street. We chant with the nam myoho renge kyo lotus sutra, which, of course, is the essence of Buddhism. We call it Daimoku. Through this practice, one is able to reveal the state of Buddhahood in one's life, experienced as the natural development of joy, increased vitality, courage, wisdom and compassion.”

“Hey, yeah, I remember an old Jack Nicholson movie, The Last Detail. Nicholson plays an old first class petty officer who’s trying to take this young A.W.O.L. sailor to the brig, and they end up at one of your group’s sessions. They’re all smoking pot and listening to groovy music. A little later in the movie, the kid prisoner breaks free, and as he runs he keeps chanting that sutra thing, with old Jack, huffing and puffing, right at his heels.”

“Did he escape?” Roscoe asked.

“Uh, nope,” said Bill, “Jack fucked him up pretty badly and finished escorting the kid to the brig,” Bill smiled, relishing the look of disappointment on Roscoe’s face.

“Well, karma was probably with him anyway. We can never know when our reward will come, but it sure did with me!” said Roscoe, a hint of defiance in his voice.

260 “Let me have one of your cards,” said Arlene. “I just love jazz and the darker the blues, the better. It’s so romantic that you were in New Orleans to get inspired with your music,” she added.

“Yeah, let me get a shot of you next to my wife,” said Bill, and he took the picture.

Back inside their cabin, Bill began running through the photos he had taken so far on their trip, and when he came to the shot of Roscoe, he stopped. He was listening to Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” on his iPod, and it was an eerie feeling when he noticed that seated next to Arlene was exactly nobody. Bill inspected the frame closely to see if there was a mark or some light that covered Roscoe’s image, but no, it was completely empty of any human form whatsoever. He could even see the back of the chair where Roscoe had been sitting.

“Arlene,” he said, handing her the camera, “take a look.

This is the shot I took of you and that musical Buddha.

Freaky, but he’s not in the picture.”

Arlene looked at it. “My, that is strange. Do you suppose he’s some kind of vampire?” she said, smiling mischievously.

Bill took the camera from her, set it down carefully, and covered her body with his. “I vant to drink your blood!” he vamped, pressing his lips against her soft and tender white neck. Bill reached over, and with some awkward effort, hit the button to turn off the compartment lights.

“Maybe we will adopt,” whispered Bill, as he kissed his wife with more passion than he had felt in several months. ***

261 Later that evening, as the clock on Bill’s cell said 3 AM, he got up, saw that Arlene was still asleep, and he walked out into the passageway. He wore his shorts and a tee, and some new brown Crocs that Arlene had just bought him for his birthday.

He was surprised to see that the light in Mary Lou’s compartment was off. In fact, there was no human noise throughout the entire train. Although they were moving on at quite a clip, and Bill could feel the usual grinding and groaning of the cars upon the old tracks, he did not see any sign of an attendant, conductor or other passenger as he made his way down the passageway of his sleeper back toward the dining car.

As he pushed through the pneumatic doors into the car, it was all darkened within, and Bill began to feel uneasy. This is odd. They don’t usually leave lights off at night, he thought, feeling a breeze flowing down the center of the aisle, even though there were no windows open.

When Bill reached the end of the dining car, he came upon a strange sight. The doors to the next car were locked, and a sign over the door’s window read, “Private Party in Progress. Do Not Enter!”

Bill pulled the sign away from the little window, and what he saw made him drop down immediately between the cars. He felt the rushing wind and the hellacious vibrations of the cars speeding over the tracks. Once in awhile he would lurch and hit his head and body against the sides.

The conductor’s spiel had warned that one could lose a foot or toes, However, he needed to see what was going on inside that car, so he slowly raised himself up until his eyes just peeked over the little window into the next car. What he saw was a human train of naked bodies glistening with

262 perspiration and joined in the strangest assortment of sexual activity he had ever seen in his life. In front were Mr. and Mrs. Iverson, the old couple, and Mrs. Iverson had metal hoops pierced through her nipples and on her vagina, and silver chains were running through each one, and they were all hooked-up with the rest of the macabre assortment of bodies running behind her. Directly behind her, the big Filipino Dining Room Supervisor had entered the elderly woman “doggie style,” and next came her husband, Walt, who was standing right beside the fat Filipino, urging him on and jangling his wife’s chains as if they were bells on Santa’s sleigh. Next came Bertha, the waitress, a few others and then at the back of the conga line were Richard, the head conductor and his gal Friday, Mary Lou. Each was attached to the other with metal piercings, rings or hoops, and they were going at it like some kind of sexual three-ring circus act. They all had tattoos that decorated their naked bodies like Japanese thugs—dragons, lizards, scorpions, and, on the small of the lovely Mary Lou’s back was the unmistaken image of the beast master, himself, Satan. The image was moving quite rapidly, up and down, and, as Bill listened carefully, he could hear heavy metal music pounding in the car. It sounded like AC/DC or Metallica, if he wasn’t mistaken.

But it was the big sign on the wall behind the table filled with food and booze that really psyched him out. It said, “Welcome to the Birth Train of Bill and Arlene Daniels!”

The door whooshed open; two huge men grabbed Bill from either side and dragged him inside the car. The doors shut, and the Velcro shade was drawn down over the small window on the car door. Bill could feel the train rocking, and then everything went black. ***

263 Epilogue Bill and Arlene Daniels got off in Los Angeles, California, along with Roscoe Lee Hayward. They took a cab from Union Station, downtown, out to the Wilshire District where Roscoe’s music recording studio was. They took the elevator to the tenth floor, got out, walked slowly down the hall, and Roscoe opened the door to his suite of rooms.

Inside were a modern recording studio, engineering mix, computerized equipment and dozens of different types of microphones.

Roscoe motioned for them to be seated on the couch inside the studio, and he walked behind the panel of mixing controls. He took out a compact disk and inserted it into the player. “You were right, Arlene, honey. I was inspired to write something during my trip to New Orleans. It’s kind of in honor of you two, you devils! You were chosen to be the couple for the New Age of the coming Kali Yuga era. Destruction is in, don’t you know? And you’re going to have the child who will usher in the End of Times!”

Suddenly, Bill and Arlene remembered. They were taken into the black car and they were given injections, probed with hundreds of instruments, and, finally, the feeling of an obscene passion filled their bodies like locusts descending on the Earth. Colors became muted and then darkened to purple, everything was swollen around them, and the eyes of the watchers encircled their naked forms as they posed on the high, four-poster bed in front of them. They chanted together, “Nam, myoho ringe kyo!

The master will be born! Nam, myoho ringe kyo! The End of Times has come!” Bill and Arlene fucked like swine, like goats, like spastic muskrats in conjugal love. And then, like an obscene porno movie from hell, each one of the passengers took turns fucking each of them. Man on man,

264 woman on woman—it didn’t matter—they were all one heaving, thrusting, and sweating pile of bodies. What Shakespeare would have called “the beast with fifteen backs.” The image of the tortured prisoners of Abu Grahib filled Bill’s consciousness before he passed out for the second time.

A soft, bluesy jazz piece filled the room, as both Arlene and Bill Daniels stared at each other in stark terror.

Roscoe the musical Buddhist and Satanist smiled over at them, bobbing his head in time to his newest composition.

“I wrote it in honor of your impregnation, Arlene. I call it ‘Sunrise Unlimited,’ because it is truly the dawning of a new age on Earth!”

Bill and Arlene fell, gasping, into each other’s arms, and the sobs could be heard over the music for several minutes, until, it all stopped.

265

The West Nile Passover Alvin handed the Afikoman to Mrs. Walker, who stared down at the piece of matzah in her hand as if it were trash.

“Thank you, Mrs. Walker. This is the matzah to be hidden somewhere in the house so the youngest family member can later search for it, in order to negotiate with the Seder leader, me, for a reward of some kind. Could you please hide it for us?”

Mrs. Walker smiled crookedly, as if she were doing the bidding of someone in the mental ward of a hospital.

“Whatever you say, Mr. Levine,” she said, as she held the matzah by her fingertips, as one would hold something disgusting.

“It’s okay, Mrs. Walker,” said Esther. “That’s unleavened bread—like a cracker. It’s what the Christians use in their mass.”

Mrs. Walker held the wafer up to the chandelier light with both hands, and, quite sarcastically, prayed, “Dómine, non sum dignus,” and then she walked with the matzah into the living room.

“I thought she was an atheist,” whispered Ruth to her mother.

266 “She is. I believe she thinks she’s being funny, dear,” said Mrs. Levine. *** It all happened when each one of the Levine family, on different days, walked out of their ranch-style house in Boulder, Colorado, to get the mail. While doing so, they were each attacked by a swarm of infected mosquitoes that had been breeding in the nearby pond over at the Shady Pines Golf Course.

The first Levine to come down with the disease was Saul, nineteen, the youngest, who was home from New York University. The next day, the mother, Esther, fifty-four, a housewife, bit the dust. Then, the father, Alvin, fifty-six, a professor of literature at the university, came down with it, closely followed by Ruth, twenty-two, who was a stock trader on Wall Street. Thus, it was, after four days into the Passover season, the entire Levine family became bedridden.

The symptoms of West Nile virus are headache, fever, rash and swollen glands. However, in the Levine family, these can best be shown by how it affected each person. For example, when Alvin got a headache, he liked to curse in, of all things, Spanish. “Mi cabeza goddamned es alrededor estallar,” or, “My goddamned head is about to explode.”

“It’s the Nile, don’t you see? In Egypt! It’s a terrorist plot against the Jews!” screamed Esther, clutching her stomach. “Feel my head, will you?” asked Ruth, “You can cook matzo brie on it, for crissakes!” Saul proclaimed, “My balls are getting huge, and they itch like crazy!”

In response to which, his sister answered from her bedroom next to his, “You only wish, retard! Quit playing that Death Metal music and the itch will go away.”

267 The first Seder night can only be described the way it happened.

Even though the entire family was being treated by a nurse, Mrs. Mildred Walker, who had been sent to the Levines from Boulder Private Duty On-Call, Esther insisted they all sit down to eat together and “Do what millions of Jews all over the world were doing at that same moment.�

So it was that the table was set, under the supervision of a bleary-eyed and dizzy Esther Levine, so that instead of parsley, they had fresh basil, and instead of a lamb shank bone, they had a left-over sweet-and-sour sparerib from Saul’s take-out Chinese that he ordered the first night home. Mrs. Walker, it so happened, was an avid atheist, and, even though Esther explained things to her, the fortyeight-year old nurse decided she was going to do everything she could to ridicule the Jewish faith. Therefore, the Seder plate was, for all intents and purposes, an abomination.

This story is being told from the point-of-view of each character as he or she communicated at various intervals during the dinner. The organization of these dialogues will follow, in an extremely generalized manner, the Passover Haggadah, so non-Jews will have to bear with this formality. *** I. Recitation of the Kiddush (the first cup of wine and the first secret is unveiled).

All of the Levines were seated around the table. Due to the sickness, they each wore some variety of sleep wear.

Mrs. Levine wore a long, Navaho robe that she had purchased on a vacation trip to Arizona. Mr. Levine had on his blue velvet smoking jacket, with tee-shirt and boxers

268 beneath. Ruth had on green long johns and an NYU top, and her brother, Saul, wore red pajama bottoms and a Metallica tee.

The Levine family, it must be mentioned, were an extremely health-conscious group. They were vegetarians, they exercised regularly, and they all had what could be called by the American media culture, an “ideal physique.”

None was overweight, none had any physical flaws of any kind, and each was, under usual circumstances, rather attractive in his or her own way. However, since the West Nile virus had gripped them, they had become physically reminiscent of the rather gothic Addams Family from 1960s television history.

When the father, Alvin, raised his glass to recite the Kiddush, his voice had a crackling, almost horrifying quality to it, so that several of the family members sympathetically cleared their own throats.

“Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the universe, Creator of the fruit of the vine,” proclaimed Alvin, in Hebrew, and each member of the family drank down the entire wine glass of Manischewitz kosher. Then, taking their turn in order, the family began to read from the Haggadah, until they came to the ritual washing of the hands. Mrs. Walker, the atheist, with a sarcastic smile, brought around the bowl of water and the towel so each Levine could wash his or her hands and dry them off.

When the bowl came to young Saul, instead of dipping his fingers into the liquid, he dropped his forehead down into the bowl, and then raised his head, a slow grin spreading over his face as the drops rolled down his nose, over his chin and onto the white lace table cloth. “From this day forward, I am going to practice Buddhism as my only religion!” he said, setting the bowl of water down on Mrs. Levine’s mother’s handmade table cloth.

269 As with most pronouncements in the Levine family, this particular statement did not go unnoticed, even though the family was sick, and it was Esther, the mother, who began the discussion.

“I understand, Solly! You’re becoming a Jewbu. The poet, Alan Ginsberg, he was one. That’s very nice, Saul. Please, pass the parsley, dip it into the salt water, it’s the tears of our affliction.”

“No, I am a total Buddhist. You can forget the Jew part,” said Saul, tossing the basil leaf over his shoulder. He then stood up at his place. “If you’ll excuse me, I am going to go to my room to meditate. I need to practice Metta Bhavana, or Loving-Kindness meditation.

This is something you Jews seem to have problems doing successfully.”

“You Jews? You do realize what makes one a Jew, don’t you?” asked his mother. “When your mother is a Jew, you are also a Jew, my boy!”

Ruth laughed weakly and said, “The Buddha taught that one should practice loving-kindness to all sentient beings.

Still, would it kill you to find a nice sentient being who happens to be Jewish?”

“Now wait a second, dear, let the boy speak,” said Alvin.

“What is this loving-kindness? Certainly we Jews practice it as well. It’s called a mitzvah, is it not? A good deed toward others. I would dare say, a good deed may even go farther at improving the world than a lonely meditation could ever accomplish,” his father pointed out.

Saul’s eyebrows rose in exasperation. “I’m sorry, but this is loving-kindness that radiates toward everyone—even our enemies. Last time I checked, the Israeli army wasn’t

270 showing much of this kindness toward Palestinian civilians in the Gaza.”

Ruth took some matzah from her father, as he had just broken the middle one on the Seder plate, before she said, “Daily rocket attacks from our enemies simply do not elicit the sort of loving-kindness you’re talking about, Gautama.

And, before that, when there were no walls or checkpoints, Jewish school children were being blown-up by suicide bombers. Loving-kindness has to work both ways, I would say.”

Saul had sat back down in his chair, remembering that he had, the previous year, negotiated a one hundred dollar bill from his father for the Afikoman. As he took his share of matzah, he pretended he was practicing loving-kindness toward his ignorant family.

“This is the bread of affliction which our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt. All who are hungry—let them come and eat. All who are needy—let them come and celebrate the Passover with us. Now we are here; next year may we be in the Land of Israel. Now we are slaves; next year may we be free.” Alvin spoke these words and then he asked the four questions. Mrs. Walker could be heard knocking over something in the bathroom, as she had been instructed to hide the Afikoman. In his state of lovingmindfulness, Saul made a mental note of her location. *** II. The Second Cup of Wine (and the second secret is revealed).

Alvin led the table in the spilling of three drops of wine onto the plates, one for each of the disasters. 1. Blood 2. Fire 3. And Pillars of Smoke. Then, with some

271 difficulty, as each of the Levines was somewhat dizzy from the flu and the first cup of wine, they each spilled a drop on their plates for the ten plagues: 1.

Blood

2.

Frogs

3.

Vermin

4.

Wild Beasts

5.

Pestilence

6.

Boils

7.

Hail

8.

Locusts

9.

Darkness

10.

Slaying of the First-Born

“Don’t forget the eleventh plague. West Nile virus,” said Ruth, with a weak chuckle. “Oh, and I wanted to tell you all, since we don’t get together that often. I am a lesbian, and I’m bringing my lover, Abigail, to the Seder next year.

She is not Jewish, she’s Presbyterian, but she has an open mind.”

Both Mr. and Mrs. Levine stopped pointing to the shank bone (the pork sparerib), and Alvin quickly sped up his presentation of the Seder plate, as if he were fastforwarding a CD, so he could get to the second cup prayer, and they all guzzled down the second cup.

Nobody spoke a single word. They were lost in their own thoughts. They just stared at whatever was in front of

272 them, listening to Mrs. Walker, who was now rummaging around in the den, apparently still searching for the perfect place an atheist could hide the Afikoman from a bunch of superstitious Jews.

“I . . . I never realized you were that way,” said Alvin, trying to get his mind around what his daughter had just told them. “You never seemed to display any homosexual preferences when you were younger. You played with dolls, you were quite feminine. Why, you weren’t even a tomboy,” he reflected, but then, as he saw Ruth’s face become crimson, he added, “not that being a tomboy is any sign of one’s sexual preference.”

“Have you seen an analyst? Perhaps there’s something in your past that has caused you to stray from the path,” Esther began.

“I’m not crazy, Mother! I knew you would all feel this way.

I just knew it! From the moment Abigail kissed me, at her birthday party, I knew I wanted her. Being homosexual is preferring to have someone of your own sex touch you in intimate ways. It’s not rocket science.” Ruth filled her cup again and drank it down quickly.

“We don’t drink that until after the meal, young lady,” said Alvin.

“I’m not hungry,” said Ruth, and she got up to leave, but Saul pulled her back down. She turned toward him and sarcastically quipped, “Hey, brother! Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Forget this and attaining Enlightenment will be the least of your problems.”

“Hey, it’s not the end of the world. Even though it could happen any day if our Cowboy president decides to push the button over in the Middle East. Let’s just give thanks

273 Ruth’s not a Republican lesbian,” Saul said, choking and laughing at his own joke. “Say, isn’t the Vice President’s daughter a lesbo, too?” Saul then turned toward his sister and said, quite seriously, “So, when can I meet your BabyDyke? Bring her around to my dorm. That would be totally awesome!” *** III. The Seder Meal (the third and fourth secrets are revealed, along with the third, fourth and more glasses of wine).

Having hid the Afikoman, Mrs. Walker came back into the kitchen and helped Mrs. Levine with the distribution of the meal. They had a tofu turkey, small red potatoes, broccoli and cauliflower medley, and raison and nut matzah kugel.

Each dish was placed on the table, but not one Levine took a helping from any dish. They were fasting.

Alvin, sitting still and pulling at a loose string on his smoking jacket, finally spoke. “Well, since we’re all telling secrets, I suppose it’s my turn. I’ve been keeping a young woman, a young Vietnamese woman. Her name is Van Nguyen. She is helping me with my novel. It’s about my life teaching and finally coming to terms with myself as an artist and a lover. We’ve found a publisher for it right here in Boulder. I’ve had sex with her twice. It’s not something I’m proud of. I do not want to leave you, Esther, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s just that Van is very literary.

She helps me with my content. I was never the romantic.

I’m sure you’re well aware of that. Van shows me how to add romance to my novel. That’s it. I pay for her room downtown while she finishes her schooling.”

The other family members stared at Alvin as he delivered his speech. Even Mrs. Walker stopped putting dishes on

274 the table. Finally, letting out a deep, soul-wrenching sigh, Esther Levine, the mother, stood up at her place, put her two hands down on her mother’s hand-knit Seder tablecloth, and began her own confession.

“Thanks for telling me this, Alvin. It has actually given me the courage to tell you all something that has weighed upon my conscience for twenty-two years. Remember when we couldn’t conceive after we were first married?

We tried everything. I would watch my temperature for ovulation, and you would rush home so we could hop into bed. Nothing worked. Doctor Nusbaum said it would be best for me to relax and take a vacation. That’s when I went all alone to Tahiti, remember? You were at some literary education conference. I was able to conceive shortly thereafter. Ruth is not yours, Alvin. Her father is Maxwell Goldfarb, an accountant from Atlanta, Georgia. I met him on the island, while we were scuba diving together. He told me I looked like a young mermaid underwater. I have never felt so relaxed and refreshed in my life. You have always made me feel tense, Alvin. I have always felt you looked down on me because I didn’t write. Max is still a single man, and we see each other from time to time. He has nobody else. Just me. He says it’s enough.” Esther sat down, almost tipping her chair over. She filled her cup, her hand shaking, drank deeply, and finally put the glass back down.

After the fourth cup of wine, and before the fifth, Alvin said the Conclusion of the Seder. As he spoke, there were tears rolling down his cheeks. And, as if crying were as contagious as the West Nile virus, each member of the Levine family began to cry as well, which brought them all together, in the strangest Passover they had ever experienced.

275 “The Passover Seder is ended. According to custom and law. As we were worthy to celebrate it this year, so may we perform it in future years. O Pure One in heaven above, restore the myriad assemblies of Israel. Speedily lead Your redeemed people to Zion in joy. NEXT YEAR IN JERUSALEM.” Mrs. Walker, the private duty nurse, stood outside the table, pointing outward, with her freckled arms, toward the rest of the house. “Hey! Isn’t anybody going to look for the Alfie Crumbling?”

“Hey, I got another Jewbu joke!” Saul yelled, reaching over to grab Ruth’s arm. “Be aware of your body. Be aware of your perceptions. Keep in mind that not every physical sensation is a symptom of a terminal illness.”

276

The Judgment Nora Stark spoke out to the people running down Canal Street. “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the ground, man and beast and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them."

They paid her no heed, as they had never seen her before; she was just “Crazy Preacher Woman,” and there was no time to listen to the likes of her. They were all going someplace, and Nora knew not where. These people were always going everywhere; the tourists, the drunken fools, even the children, they all seemed to have some wild destination. It was Nora who stood still. It was Nora Stark who knew no destiny other than her daily search for food and shelter.

Today, however, Nora had a mission.

Her grandson, Isaac, was very sick, and she needed to get him to the hospital. Isaac currently lived with her in a home of crates and boxes behind the House of Voodoo. The Baptist church on Canal and Marie Laveau’s House of Voodoo on Bourbon Street were the only places where Nora could get some solace in this cruel world. She was heading toward Bourbon Street now, wrapping the colorfully patched, frayed crazy-quilt around her thin, arthritic body, watching her short, mincing steps make small splashes in the puddles along the sidewalks. Her central view of the world

277 was like someone had ripped out the heart of everything: faces, trees, houses, cars and her own reflection in the mirror, they all had a dark hole in their center. She had macular degeneration, and her vision was impaired by an increasingly dark, central circle that was widening each year, until the middle of existence was no longer there for Nora. Today, the real core of her being, Isaac, had a growth on his neck that was also getting bigger. It was time to take him to the hospital.

The Baptist church, she knew, was busy telling people to get out of the city. “The hurricane is coming,” Pastor Red Wallace had said, and “she is going to be a big one. The levees might not hold, and the entire French Quarter could be flooded.” But Nora believed the flood was called by God to punish these people. These sinners ignored her daily rantings on Bourbon Street. However, some of them, guilty as sin, would push their coins and infrequent bills into the big whiskey bottle that she labeled “Demon Rum,” and then they would laugh and wander on down the street to frequent the bars and listen to the jazz.

“Goofy” Gus Mandeville was standing behind the House of Voodoo when she arrived. The Goof was going to go with her to take Isaac to Charity Hospital. They had been friends ever since they met at the Baptist Church’s weekly “Dinner for the Homeless,” and they shared the daily hunt for “survivor pay,” as Gus called their begging along the streets of the Quarter. Gus was a Vietnam veteran, and he received a monthly disability check for the shrapnel he had received in both of his legs and the metal plate he had in his head from an errant “bouncing Betty mine.” The Goof swore he could pick-up local radio stations with his plate.

278 “Hey, Goof, time and tide wait for no man. We have to get Isaac over to the Charity Hospital before this hurricane hits. I heard the mayor say folks who can’t get out of town should go over to the football stadium.” Nora saw that three-year-old Isaac was packed into the red wagon like a sardine in a tin can. Goof had stuck water and snacks on the sides and a pair of field binoculars behind his pillow.

“We ain’t goin’ to the moon, boy! What you got packed inside there?”

Gus smiled and twirled his long, handlebar mustache.

“Good thing they got people goin’ on over to the Saints’ Stadium. They ain’t had a football team in there worth powdered grits for over ten years.”

The storm was pounding New Orleans, and from its eye, Katrina watched the little pioneers on their journey to Charity Hospital.

Katrina could also see Nora Stark’s daughter, Genevieve, as she slouched in the corner of a crack house on Dauphine, crying into her hands and whispering, “Isaac, Isaac, my poor Isaac,” over and over.

Katrina would not send her full force until the little red wagon reached the hospital, 1.1 miles distant from the House of Voodoo.

“Hey man, what you doin’ out here?” Georges “Spanky” Diable asked, as they wheeled Isaac onto Orleans Street.

Spanky was one of the local drug dealers that Gus had known during his “dark times of the soul,” as he called them. Diable had his arms filled with two DVD players, a rifle and boxes of ammunition. “The games have just started, man. We havin’ ourselves a big ole party over at Irene’s. C’mon, man! Ditch this old woman and have some fun!”

“Get thee gone, Devil!” Nora shouted, dismissing the young man with a wave of her boney fist.

279 “You crazy, man. You think this city or government cares about us? You a fool if you does! I say, get us some stuff while we can!

There ain’t gonna be no tomorrow.”

Spanky ran off down Orleans, whooping it up.

Nora, Gus and Isaac watched, helplessly, as trash cans, trees, and other debris hurtled down the street around them. Gus had constructed a shield from the lid of a steel trash can, and he was holding it out in front of them. The winds of Katrina were over one hundred miles per hour, and as they turned left onto Rampart Street, it seemed they had been traveling for hours. One more right turn onto Tulane, and they would be there.

Charity was the oldest operating hospital in America.

Founded in 1736, by a French sailor, it had been the place for the poor of New Orleans ever since its inception.

Nora and Gus pulled Isaac up into the Emergency Entrance of Charity and collapsed. They were not alone. Dozens of others lined the passageway, in various states of hysteria and injury, blood pouring from open wounds, whimpers escaping clenched jaws.

The day turned into night, and then it was another day and night, and another, and Katrina had finally succeeded in breaking the levees of Lake Ponchartrain. Charity Hospital was lost to the floods. Across the way, Tulane’s heliport was busy lifting patients out of the chaos and hell that had become New Orleans. Ironically, snipers were shooting at these rescue helicopters, perhaps realizing that their freedom and fury were not long for this world.

Bodies from the basement morgue of Charity were stacked into stairwells, and the entire emergency room had been evacuated to the second floor. There was stifling heat and no electricity, as the emergency generator had finally run down. Patients were strewn around like floating jetsam,

280 with nurses and doctors assisting them, as best they could, muttering curses to each other about the lack of rescue help after so many days. However, inside room 218, a reunion was taking place.

Isaac’s tumor had been operated upon, in a makeshift operating room, and the doctor told Nora that the tumor would have to be examined when conditions were better.

Nora looked into the face of this doctor and could not see his features, only a black hole, but she was thankful. “The Lord sent you to us, and for that I am truly thankful!” she said, and Gus shook his hand.

Genevieve had entered the hospital the day before, withdrawing from drugs, and now she was shivering inside room 218, holding her son’s hand. “I know I can kick it, Mama,” said Genevieve, her bloodshot eyes tearing up.

Gus took her other hand. “Doc told me he has some drugs to make it easier on you,” he said, and they sat there, all three of them, with Isaac asleep between them, above the flood in a raised bed, and they waited for the flood to recede, hoping that their union would last beyond this natural disaster and into the dry dawn of a new day. At the window, a white pigeon landed on the sill and cooed.

Nora smiled to herself and remembered some scripture.

From above, Katrina watched, as her waters poured over these tired souls and their dwellings. Out on Bourbon Street, Georges Diable and his gang were shooting it out in front of the House of Voodoo. Diable wore a black mask he had stolen from the shop, the mask of a demon, and he and his drug-dealing friends were falling, one at a time, to the guns of the New Orleans Police Department. Across the entire City of New Orleans, on the fourth day, a giant rainbow appeared. Katrina melted into the mist of that rainbow, and the world continued on its journey.

281

The Pitch of Abraham On a stretch of sidewalk next to the San Diego downtown post office, Danny Soloman, 68, is selling his wares.

Danny is a short, balding and heavy-set man, who wears Sears Roebuck suits, cartoon character neckties and canvas-covered rubber shoes. He has a variety of gadgets inside his small, converted coffee cart. Among his sales collection, there are pens that glow in the dark, magnetic screwdriver sets, silk ties from China, and a variety of robotic toys that can talk, pick up objects, and are all solar powered. Above his cart is a sign that reads: “Special Gifts for Special People in Your Life.”

Danny has worked this location for 23 years now, and he has seen good times and bad times, but these were the worst times he has ever seen. The mortgage crisis and bank failures, the freezing of credit, have taken the extra money people usually have for the things Danny has to sell. These days, he is lucky to sell twenty-five dollars in merchandise, and this is not enough money for his rent, much less for his other bills. However, as Danny is an optimistic and loving soul, he believes he will weather this “downturn,” as he calls it, and “look their demons in the eye,” as he terms the way people have to collectively face their problems.

282 It is a Friday, and at sundown it will be Danny’s Sabbath, as he is Jewish, so he packs up his merchandise, lifts the little robots off the sidewalk, turns them off, and gently inserts them inside his cart. He then folds the colorful ties and lays them length-wise along the sides of his cart and closes the lid. His cart has wheels, and he pushes it easily down the street, whistling as he goes.

However, there is a man in cargo shorts standing against the post office wall, wearing a Quiksilver teeshirt with the words “Robert August, Endless Summer Surf Shops” on the front, watching every move Danny is making. He is tall, blonde and handsomely athletic-looking, with a small goatee, and in his left hand is a BlackBerry, and his long fingers are diligently working on the keys. As Danny walks down the sidewalk toward his rooming house, the tanned stranger slowly follows him, slapping along in his red flipflops.

As Danny Soloman walks up to the old Victorian rooming house on Fifth Avenue, a swarm of young children runs up to greet him. They are kids who range in ages between six and ten, and they all live in Danny’s rooming house and in other low-income rentals along this stretch of inner-city neighborhood.

“Hi Danny!” the kids scream, pulling on Danny’s baggy trouser legs.

Danny sits down on the front porch swing of the old Victorian, clearly out of breath, as little Billy Mendoza pushes Danny’s cart into the back yard, where he locks the cart just inside a small garage. Billy then runs back to the front of the house, climbs the stairs, two-at-a-time, and elbows two other kids out of the way to sit down next to Danny.

283 “Make any sales today, Danny?” asks Billy, his brown eyes gazing with intent adoration up at the old man. Billy Mendoza wears patched jeans and a Hawaiian shirt with parrots on it. His black hair is a bit too long, as his single mother, Maria, a nurses’ assistant at the elderly nursing home down the street, can’t afford to get it cut, so Danny often cuts it for him in his room with the clippers made in China that he sells.

“No, but here’s one of my robots for you, Billy,” says Danny, and he hands Billy one of the R2D2-like devices he keeps inside his suit jacket for just such occasions.

The nine-year-old smiles and takes the toy, turning it all around to take in its technical intricacies. “Hey, thanks, Danny! You got the batteries for it?” he smiles, knowing that Danny always waits until after dinner to provide the “little extras” that are always needed when he gives away his new toys to the kids.

“Yes, I’ll bring them down after I say my prayers for Sabbath. We’ll have our usual ice cream social and star gazing party out here on the porch. You kids can come too,” Danny adds, smiling at the six other kids sitting in various poses on and around the porch swing. Danny gets up slowly from the porch swing, as the arthritis in his legs has been acting up lately, and he waves to all the children before going upstairs to his room.

As Danny climbs the stairs, he is thinking about his wife, Rachel, who passed away last year. She would have been waiting for him at the top of the stairs, in her apron, with a wooden spoon in her hand, and Danny would have smelled the delicious odor of boiling chicken for Sabbath dinner.

He would have taken her into his arms and lifted her off the ground, but today he is not so lucky. “She’s better off not seeing the country like this,” he whispers to himself,

284 and he turns the key in the lock and opens the door to his two-room apartment.

As he steps into the living room, Danny senses something different inside. The wall cases are still filled with his assortment of sales items, neatly arranged and labeled for quick reference; the small laptop computer is still in the corner next to the window, and the table that serves as his dining and work space is still as cluttered with bills of lading and other debts as it was that morning when he left for work. “No, there is something else wrong in here,” Danny says, as he walks into the tiny kitchen.

“Aloha . . . Mr. Danny Soloman, I presume?” The tall, blonde stranger is seated at the kitchen table, his BlackBerry in front of his face, his tan legs crisscrossed at the ankles on top of the Formica top.

“Why, how did you get in here?” asks Danny, obviously startled.

“Never mind that, Dude. Are you Danny Soloman, age 68, a widower, residing at 3384 Fifth Avenue, San Diego, California? Have you worked in sales for thirty-five years?”

“Yes, but how do you know all that? Are you with the Census?” Danny sits down in the other chair.

“No, Bro’, we don’t count, we collect,” says the stranger, a slight smile playing on his thin lips. “I just want to make sure you have your last wave lined up, is all.”

“Last wave? Lined up? What kind of gibberish is this?” asks Danny.

“Your affairs, of course. We can’t collect you until we’ve made sure your affairs are in order. You can see, Bro’, can’t you, that’s it’s now your time to ride the last wave?”

285 The stranger’s voice sounds impatient to Danny, as if he was waiting in line to get on the next bus, and Danny was the old guy in front of him fumbling for change.

“I still don’t understand you,” says Danny, getting exasperated. “What are you collecting that I own? I know, I’m behind on some of my bills, but I’ve made arrangements to pay what I can.”

The stranger frowns, his eyebrows knitting together on his forehead like a shroud over his deep-set, cavernous blue eyes. Inside those caverns, Danny thinks he can see a flash of crimson. “Consider yourself lucky, Dude. Many people we collect are not notified beforehand. They go immediately. But, since you’re dying from natural causes, you can get your affairs in order first.”

“Baruch Atah Adonai!”Danny closes his eyes. When he opens them, the stranger has vanished. “Just what I thought,” Danny says, “he isn’t real at all. It’s just the stress of these hard times, and I’m hungry.” Danny begins to assemble the candles and Sabbath candlesticks for Friday’s sundown onto a brass serving tray.

As Danny walks back into the living room, he drops the tray with the candlesticks. The stranger sits in the corner at his computer nook, typing something into the BlackBerry.

“Man, I hope you’re not going to be one of those who thinks he’s special,” the stranger says. “Listen, Dude, there are only three exceptions, and you really don’t fit any of them.”

A gentle rapping sounds at the door, and Danny opens it to see little Billy Mendoza. “Hey, Danny! Don’t forget to

286 bring the batteries,” the boy says, his vibrant smile filling the room with its brilliance.

“Don’t worry, muchacho,” says Danny, tousling the boy’s dark hair with his hand. “I won’t forget you. Say hello to my guest,” he adds, secretly thinking that this will prove that this whole experience is one big joke. The kid will laugh, tell him this guy’s his uncle, and everything will be back to normal.

“Where is he?” asks Billy, looking into the room.

“Right there, boy, he’s sitting at the computer nook,” says Danny, and he points directly at the figure of the blonde man.

“What do you mean, Danny, I don’t see anybody,” says Billy, and he shakes his head.

“Right there! He’s sitting right over there!” Danny shouts.

The boy looks worried for a moment, and then a smile breaks across his face. “Oh, I get you. You’re playing Dungeons and Dragons on the computer.

Sure, hey Mister, how’s it going?” Billy turns to go. “See you at the ice cream social!” he sings, as he skips away down the stairs.

Danny shuts the front door, stoops down, and slowly picks up the candles and the Sabbath candlesticks and puts them back onto the tray. “Who are you?” he asks, and his voice trembles at the thought.

“I am Death, Dude. I know, maybe my Quiksilver gear fooled you, huh? Did you expect the hooded cape and the scythe? I’m afraid that’s just for Halloween. We are very Globalist these days. The old methods just don’t work anymore, Bro’.”

287 “I don’t believe you! Prove it!” Danny shouts.

The stranger makes a tisk-tisking sound with his tongue.

“Oh, ye of little faith,” he says, and he begins to look around the apartment.

Finally, he gets up from the computer chair and flip-flops over to the window sill.

There are two tall lilies growing in a small pot. The stranger touches each one, in turn, and each one immediately shrivels up, drying into a powdery substance.

The stranger blows at them and the remaining dust forms a small cloud that is picked-up by the passing breeze outside the window and the powdery cloud whisks away into nothingness.

“What are these exceptions?

Danny.

I want to know!” says

“Well, Dude, the first one is if you are on the verge of some great invention or other noble task.” The stranger looks down at the remnants of one of Danny’s robots on top of the computer desk. “Man, sorry, but I don’t think you have much going in that direction, do you?”

“No, but tell me more. exceptions?”

What are the other two

“You must have close family members who need you.

Since your wife passed away last year, I don’t think this exception would apply either,” says the Death Dude.

“No, but what’s the last one? somewhere.”

I know I can fit in

“The final exception has to do with something one has to do before one dies that has never been accomplished before in his life. This certainly can’t apply to you either.”

288 The Death Dude gets up to leave, closes his BlackBerry and waits for Danny’s response.

“That’s it! I have never made the big sale! You know, it’s the one big pitch that shows the world that I am the best at my trade. I like to call it the ‘Pitch of Abraham.’ It’s when you make the sale that’s so big it opens up the clouds. You have to let me live so I can do it.” Danny gets down on his knees to implore Death. “How can I go if I haven’t done something big once in my life?”

Death grimaces and stares down at his BlackBerry. “I don’t know, Mister Soloman. We’ve never made such an exception for somebody like you. What is this ‘Pitch of Abraham’? How can it be so important to you?”

“It was the argument Abraham made to God to save his family from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. He negotiated with God to allow five righteous people to be spared. He started with 50, but he knew all these city folks were pretty evil, but he also knew his family was blameless, so he negotiated with God down to five. Of course, only three made it out, what with Lot’s wife and her salty curiosity. That’s what I call a sale! What do you say? Can I do it?”

The Death Dude shrugs. “Man, you drive a hard bargain.

I guess you got me. I’ll stay away until you make your big sale,” he says, as he slaps his way to the door. “By the way, when do you think you’ll make this big score?”

Danny leads the Death Dude to the front door, opens it, and waits. “Oh, maybe in a day or so. Maybe in a week,” he says, as his deadly guest walks out into the foyer. “Or, maybe never!” Danny shouts, and he slams the door shut.

289 “Ha, I put one over on that fool,” says Danny, as he turns back around, but, there, sitting in the living room lounge chair is the Death Dude! He has a disturbing grin on his face when he says, “Wow, man, I thought you were an honest Dude. So, since you’ve decided to try to put one over on us, we have to take other measures. You can’t fool Death, you know,” he says.

Danny panics, opens the front door and rushes out into the hall. As he tries to hobble down the stairs, there stands the Death Dude, at the bottom of the staircase grinning up at him. Outside, there is a squeal of tires, a horrible thud and a scream. A car door slams, and a voice yells, “My God, I hit him! He stepped right out in front of me.

Honest, I never saw him do it!”

Danny opens the front door and lumbers down the steps onto the sidewalk and into the street where the small body of Billy Menoza is lying on the asphalt in front of a SUV, in a small pool of blood. Danny bends down over the boy and feels his pulse at the neck. “He’s still alive. You! Call 911!” he points at the driver of the SUV. The traffic slowly passes by the accident, the drivers rubber-necking, as neighbors rush all around the scene, talking amongst themselves, a wave of fear and dread forming all around them. From his prone position, little Billy Mendoza’s eyes slowly open, and he stares at something over Danny’s shoulder. “Who’s that guy?” Billy asks, as he weakly points at the blonde man, who is sitting in the porch swing of the old Victorian house.

“What? Can you see him?” asks Danny, and a deep fear fills his entire being.

“Yeah,” says Billy, as his brown eyes brim with painful tears.

290 *** Later that evening, at eleven-thirty, Billy has been returned to his bed on Fifth Avenue. He has had an emergency surgery, and the doctor has been upstairs talking to Billy’s mother. As the doctor finally comes down the stairs, he stops at the front porch where many neighbors, including Danny Soloman, are still waiting to hear word of the child’s condition.

“He’s going to pull through. He broke a couple of ribs and he has a concussion, but he’ll sleep well, and then he’ll be able to get some physical therapy at the hospital,” the doctor explains, and the smiles on the faces of Billy’s friends make the doctor smile too.

“Thanks, Doctor,” says Danny, as he shakes his hand.

As the doctor pulls away from the curb, Danny sees the Death Dude coming up the street toward them. He doesn’t want to believe what he sees, but a strange, dark cloud covers everything, just before the man arrives, and Danny knows what this means.

“It’s you! What do you think you’re doing?” asks Danny.

The neighbors look at Danny, as if they think he’s seeing ghosts and they mumble to him to “Get some rest, and stay cool,” before they shuffle away, worrying about his sanity.

The Death Dude starts to walk up the stairs to the porch, but Danny grabs his arm. “Where do you think you’re going?” he asks.

The tall blonde smiles. “I’ve got an appointment up there with one William Mendoza, age nine,” he says. “Dude, you do remember our deal. Nobody fools Death. I have to be

291 up there before he wakes up at midnight. That’s the appointment, and I can’t be late by one second.”

“You mean, if you’re late, then you can’t take him?”

Danny asks.

“Never happened before, Dude, and it’s not happening now,” says Death.

“Wait a minute,” says Danny.

“I want to show you something. You just wait right here, will you please?”

The Death Dude looks puzzled. “What’s up, man?”

Danny hobbles down the stairs and heads for the garage.

A few minutes later, the old man returns, pushing his cart up to the porch’s entrance. He turns to the sidewalk, opens his cart, and begins to lay out his assortment of products for sale.

“Hey, Dude, you don’t expect to get any customers at this time of night, do you?” asks Death.

“Maybe not. Then again, maybe I will get some. You’re a customer, aren’t you?” Danny smiles, and he begins his pitch.

As Danny Soloman tells the Death Dude about the silk ties made from worms in China that were given hallucinogenic acid so they could spin this fantastic weaving pattern, the blonde man starts to watch him in fascination. “And these robots can run forever from the power of the magnificent sun! You’ll never have to buy batteries again. I didn’t want to tell the kid. I was going to surprise him. These toys will be the future of our modern age. Bigger robots will do our work, freeing us from the common drudgeries around the house. We’ll be free to do more creative activities like surfing!” he laughs.

292 And the Death Dude grins, mimicking the acrobatic riding of a surfboard, as he bends down and shoots the curl.

“Cool, man!

I’ll take all of them.

Give me those psychedelic ties, too!”

Finally, after Danny has sold the Death Dude everything in his cart, he is sweating and smiling with satisfaction.

“Now, I am going to offer you the best product I have. I am giving you the service of one intelligent, resourceful and creative man-servant. Somebody who will not need much in the way of care, as his motor has just about finished its journey.”

“What, are you kidding me?” asks the Death Dude. “You don’t mean you’re offering me you,” he says, and, across the street, the Lutheran Church bell strikes midnight.

“Hey, what time is it?” he screams, turns, and rushes up the stairs.

“Too bad, my friend, but you’re officially late for your appointment,” says Danny, as he wipes his brow with a handkerchief.

The young Death turns at the top of the stairs, livid with rage, smoke spewing from his body, but then he stops, and another grin spreads over his tanned face. “That means you’ve just done it, man. You know. The Pitch of Abraham. You were able to save that kid by making your biggest sale to me, the collector of all souls. Why, you’re just as good as old Abe, aren’t you? Abe saved his family, and he saved his son, Isaac, just like you saved this Billy the kid. Dude, I have to hand it to you. You are one totally awesome Jew!” “That’s right. I’m ready to go now,” says Danny, and he puts the Death Dude’s purchased goods into a suitcase and follows the flip-flopping surfer up Fifth Avenue. As they

293 walk into the night, a jet plane flies overhead, on its way to land at nearby Lindbergh Field, and Danny asks one more question. “Did I make it?” he says, and the Death Dude smiles back at him, as they both begin to rise up, up, up into the early morning clouds over San Diego, America’s Finest City.

From the second floor window of the old Victorian rooming house, Billy Mendoza looks out his window at the figure he knows is Danny, the old salesman who lives upstairs, as he flies up toward heaven, and, inside his nine-year-old mind, an image is engraved on it that will last his whole life through.

294

The Ghouly Gal

295 I was unloading the dresses from Carlos’s truck, and as he was sitting up front inside his cab, I was just bringing my portable hanger cart up into the bed to take down the newest fashions from New York, London and Paris. I was standing inside the truck bed near the new racks of dresses when she appeared.

My job was to grab as many dresses as I could into my arms and transfer them onto my portable rack. As I was grabbing one group of long evening gowns, she appeared to me from out of the shadows in the rear of the truck. At first, I thought she might be some wino or homeless person that had hitched a ride when Carlos wasn’t looking.

We get a lot of these folks that camp out around our warehouse section here in Fall River.

Joni Blair of Massachusetts hired mostly illegal Puerto Ricans to do the sorting, tagging and sewing, and I was one of the few American citizens employed here--in my first year of community college--so when I saw this creep come lumbering from out of the back of Carlos’s truck, I figured it was just some illegal or homeless type who wanted to find a job.

Sure, I’ve always been a fan of horror stories. I used to ditch my corny high school English classes to read Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft in the library. I knew all about witches, vampires, werewolves and all the other denizens from the pens of writers around the world, but when you first get to see one of these creatures in the flesh, it becomes a whole new ballgame.

This one was a gigantic female zombie. But, let me get this clear from the beginning, she wasn’t just some run-ofthe-mill zombie. This chick was a pregnant zombie!

296 That’s right, she was big, round, and fully packed.

Not only that, but she had been able to put on one of our latest maternity blouses, so that it was a totally macabre look. It was one of these pink numbers with lace and ribbons on the bottom of the blouse that encircled her huge belly like a decorated watermelon. Only this stomach wasn’t the size of a watermelon, this ghouly-gal’s belly was the size of a giant beach ball.

I would have laughed if I didn’t immediately see the maggots coming out of her ears and empty eye sockets.

She also had patches of black hair hanging off her head, and her breasts were immense globes that--I swear to god--were throbbing and pulsating like they were alive. I then saw that her boobs were filled with the same maggots that were overflowing from her orifices.

I was frozen in place, and I couldn’t yell for anyone. I just watched, transfixed, as this monster dragged her big load toward me, her scabby arms outstretched, and then the stench hit me. I have never in my life smelled anything so rancid and decaying.

I wondered how something so ugly and stinking could exist, much less be with child. I have been known to smoke a little weed once in awhile, for social occasions while listening to music or watching videos, but this was not a case of hallucinations. This creature was almost on me, and then her abdomen began to heave, shudder, and then, finally, rip apart. It was awesome to see this big balloon expand and then burst, but the resulting spray was a spawn from Hell!

All these miniature zombies shot out of her stomach like

297 tiny Frankenstein monsters. However, these kids didn’t need to learn how to crawl first, they just took off--a total of about fifteen of them--scattering like grunion on the beach at Cape Cod. Mother zombie deflated into a pile of bloody gray flesh right inside Carlos’s truck, and the little bastards escaped inside our warehouse. They were each about six inches tall, and they could move quite a bit faster than their mother, so I had no chance to grab one going by, even if I had wanted to.

Everything I had read about zombies was a lie, I guess. I thought they had to animate from dead corpses, but these creatures came right out of the undead’s womb and into our world. Maybe this was some kind of adaptation to our modern era of polluted ozone and global warming, how the hell should I know?

Was I the zombie master?

I finally got my courage back, and I ran up to the front of the truck and hopped up on the rail of the cab. As usual, Carlos was listening to his Salsa music on the radio, and it was turned up loud. “Hey, Carlos! Turn down the tunes, man, I need to tell you something.”

Carlos could speak pretty good English, and he liked to joke with me a lot on the job. He finally turned down his music and smiled at me, his long, handlebar mustache twitching, expecting me to come out with some of my college-boy humor. However, I was obviously not in the mood for a joke. “You gotta come see this, Carlos. It’s un-fucking-believable. And now the place is infested with these things!” I had to drag him down from his cab, because he thought I was joking with him, but he at last came around back with me to look.

I was shocked to see that there were no longer any

298 remains of the zombie mother on the bed of his truck--not even a bloody stain. Even her stink had seemingly evaporated into thin air. Carlos looked at me. “Hey, Chico, what you so white for, man? You seen a ghost back here?”

“Carlos, honest, there was this giant zombie mother-madre gigante--and she was standing right here in your truck. And then . . .” I saw the doubtful expression on my friend’s face, and I stopped. “Forget it. Get back to work.

I’ll handle it.”

“Hay que muchacho,” Carlos said, shaking his head, as he returned to his truck.

I’ll handle it? Did I really believe I could convince anybody of what I had just witnessed? Oh sure, I would just walk into Bill Walsh--my supervisor’s--office and say, “Hey, Bill.

I know this sounds a little weird, but I just saw a pregnant zombie bitch give birth to a litter of her offspring inside our warehouse.”

I knew Bill, and he would not take kindly to talk like this.

This was a guy who once was buzzing off to lunch, and a cat was sleeping inside his car’s motor. It screeched its death yowl, and he cursed at it because it made him late for his cheeseburger and cola. So he just took a hose and flushed it off, as the women stood around gasping at the carnage.

Bill was not a sympathetic guy.

I did know that unless we wanted to experience a zombie fashion show in a few days or however much time it took for those fifteen ogres to grow up, then I had to figure out some way of getting rid of them, but I needed help. The only person at Joni Blair I could trust about something like

299 this was Samantha Walsh, Bill’s daughter. Like me, she was a college kid, although she attended a university, but we had gone out a few times, and I knew she liked me.

I’ve always believed that women and children have much more open minds than men. For example, women read more fiction than men do, and they can also multi-task a lot better than men. However, I knew I would have to approach this problem with some amount of discretion, because even women needed some kind of evidence to believe something as outrageously gruesome as this was.

Samantha was working in the office on the computer. It was her job to get all the direct mail and online orders from customers and put them into bills of lading to be delivered to the women in the warehouse, who would then pick the order from the miles of dress racks inside the warehouse, and then I would collect the order onto my portable cart, roll them over to my shipping department, and pack them into delivery boxes for shipment.

I knew Samantha was also a horror fan, as we had watched quite a few videos together after work. So I was going to approach my communication problem in a hypothetical way, as I thought this would allow Samantha’s great critical mind to work without fear and doubt setting in to spoil my effort at finding a way to get rid of these monsters.

“Listen, Sam, I need your help on something,” I said, casually, draping my arms across the top of her computer monitor.

“Help? Since when did you need my help, Jack Randall?” she said, glancing up at me between keystrokes.

300

“C’mon, don’t get into your isolated male versus social female argument again. I really need your assistance here.” I sat down in a chair next to her and looked her in the eyes the way all “sensitive males” are supposed to do.

My Metro-look was in need of a lot of upkeep; denims and Death Metal tees did not suitably put one into the compassionate and responsive male category. However, Samantha realized that I was a “project in the making,” so she usually cut me some slack.

Samantha finally stopped typing and turned all her attention to me. Her brown hair was swept up in a doughnut, and she wore a blue sweater dress with black, opaque tights. She also had on ankle boots that accented the sweet curvature of her calves and thighs. “Well, Jack, what’s got your bowels in an uproar today?” she said, stealing one of her father’s favorite expressions. “Aren’t they feeding you enough real knowledge over at the community college?”

“It’s not about school this time, Sam. You know how I like to fart around writing fiction? This time, I’m kind of stumped. I’m writing this story about zombies, and I’ve actually used our warehouse as the setting. Problem is, I’ve got an unconventional type of zombie. It really doesn’t fit the usual kind that we saw in Romero’s movies or even in the 28 Days British flicks.”

I could tell by the way she pulled her chair over to me and took my hands that Sam was interested. Women are so physical when they get enthusiastic about a subject.

Samantha loved getting included in my creative work. She

301 didn’t

know

how

included

she

was

going

to

be.

“What kind of monsters are they?” she asked, her blue eyes sparkling with curiosity.

“I don’t know yet, but it’s the way they came to be that has me in a quandary. What would you say, for example, if I told you these monsters came out of a mother zombie’s womb? Except, she didn’t give birth to them in the human way. Instead, her abdomen exploded, and these little half-foot tall baby zombies ran out of her and into our warehouse. Then, when my story’s hero tries to show the remains of the mother to a fellow worker, her body has vanished. Now, in my story’s impasse, all these little fuckers are running loose inside the dress warehouse. I don’t know how to find them or what it might take to get rid of them.”

“Wow, that’s quite a story!” said Sam, wrinkling her nose in concentration. “I would say you could rule out impregnation by a male zombie. As far as I know, the dead cannot reproduce. That would mean this little lady of yours had to have been knocked-up by some outside source.”

I smiled. “Yeah, that makes sense. I was thinking maybe this was some zombie reaction to our planet’s pollution or environmental disaster.”

“Perhaps, but I was thinking she could just have been stuffed with these little critters the way human’s have perfected miniaturization. You know, the way computer processors have been getting smaller and much more efficient? Why wouldn’t space invaders want to have a silent way to infiltrate our populace? Small is better, so to

302 speak.”

“Say, that’s really brilliant, Samantha! I knew you would come through for me. That means these little zombies might not get any bigger, right? And they might not even be flesh zombies at all. They could be computerized robots carrying some kind of biological virus or other deadly weapon.” I was going with the flow of the brainstorm.

“Yes, but why would they choose our warehouse to spread the virus?” she speculated.

We were both silent for a few moments, until I looked out at the vast assortment of clothing and an idea came to me.

“The mother zombie was wearing one of our maternity outfits. Maybe they’re going to use our clothing to spread the disease or virus. That could do the trick, couldn’t it?”

I squeezed Sam’s hands a little too hard.

“Hey, Jack, that hurts! This is just fiction, remember?” she squealed.

“Yes, it is. But I’m just excited for my story, you know. I might even get it published.” I stood up and stretched.

“Well, thanks for your help, Samantha. I guess I’ll take your advice and work up a draft of my story. I’ll let you read it, if you want to,” I yawned.

“Certainly! asking.”

It sounds quite good, actually.

Thanks for

As I walked back to my shipping department, I was

303 thinking about what Sam had said. It made a lot of sense, so I figured I would stay after work and see if I couldn’t track these robots down on my own.

The day ended, and I told Bill I was going to do some overtime preparing extra boxes for the shipments to go out on Friday, our big mail day. He said okay, and I waved to him and Samantha as they drove away. All the other workers had also left the warehouse, so I was completely alone to search for the zombie robots, if they were robots.

Luckily for me, I had just done some hunting in the woods the week before, so I had a Ruger .44 semiautomatic carbine in my truck. I got it along with about fifty rounds of shells and proceeded to search the place in sections. I knew these little buggers could move pretty fast, but I should be able to stop one with my gun.

I decided to start in the back near the restrooms. I knew there were a lot of dressing rooms back there as well as lockers for the Puerto Rican women workers. When I entered, I could hear the hissing of the pipes, the overhead fan and all the other noises you never hear during noisy working hours.

I started by checking all the lockers first. As I pulled each locker open, I kept my rifle at the ready, expecting one of these zombie children to jump out at me. Nothing was there except smelly socks and a few bags of tortillas. As I opened the last one, I suddenly heard what sounded like a coat hanger dropping inside the dressing room on the far left.

I walked slowly toward the curtain in front of the dressing

304 compartment, my rifle pointing and my heart beating wildly. What if these creatures were able to grow in a short time? I might be facing a fully grown zombie. I knew enough that I should blow out its brains, so I had my gun pointed where I thought head level should be, and I pulled back the curtain.

It was pitch dark, so I reached around with the left hand and hit the light switch on the wall. Standing there under the haze of the 60-watt bulb was Samantha. She was wearing one of our flimsiest nighties, the Midnight Lace, and my fear suddenly turned to joy. Her breasts more than amply filled the top, and her brown thighs were inviting to the touch.

Samantha grinned up at me. “Why the weapon, Jack?

Don’t you know the difference between a gun that’s for killing and one that’s for fun?” Again, she was repeating one of her former Marine father’s old sayings from his boot camp days.

I put down my rifle and walked over to her. She smelled like peppermint, and she felt like everything I had dreamt about for several months. Why she chose this night to give me her gifts was beyond me, but I wasn’t going to look a “gift woman in the mouth.” I hugged her closely, and we began to make love, when I saw Sam pointing at something behind me. I turned, and there was one of those tiny creatures.

Samantha was right about these things in one respect. It was not zombie looking. Its skin looked very rubbery, and its eyes glowed like one of those toy robots you get for Christmas. However, I wasn’t going to take any chances about what it contained. “Hold your ears,” I told

305 Samantha, and I picked up my rifle, aimed, and easily blew away the little creature. What appeared to be electronic parts flew in every direction, and we knew these were, indeed, devices that had been implanted in that zombie mother.

With Sam following me all around the warehouse, we went on a search and destroy mission. One by one, I tracked down all fifteen of the little robots and destroyed them all.

After I finished the job, I explained to Samantha all about what had occurred earlier in the day, and she believed me. We went into the back dressing room set aside for the professional models who made infrequent private shows for local sales people, and we made some pretty nice whoopee. This had turned into a great finale for my personal story, and I told Sam I was going to put her in my fictional one, as we showered together after our lovemaking.

We laughed as we left that evening, and I walked her to her car. She was parked around the corner of the building. As we got to the end of the front parking lot, I suddenly began to smell the stench again. Oh shit! I thought to myself. What if those miniatures were just avatars for the real ones? Just like on that virtual world web site, Second Life, those little robots I shot could have been computer spies sent on a mission. Now that they were destroyed, the signal must have been sent for the real troops to enter the scene.

I instinctively reacted, and I ran with Samantha back to my car. I told her to drive, and I rode shotgun. As we pulled out and around the building, there they were.

Fifteen full-sized versions of modern zombies were spaced out on the asphalt, under a full moon’s glow. Each one

306 had the musculature of an NFL linebacker, and, as it turned out, they could run like one also. These were certainly not the sloe-footed, walking dead from the movies! These were supersized versions out of a nightmare. They had bat-like wings that were black and leathery and were pointed up from their shoulders like sails on a boat. I could see the veins in the webbing of the wings, and it matched the much larger veins on the buffed pectorals and thighs of these superbly formed creatures.

Only the heads remained that of the stereotypical zombie.

The heads were gray and had eyeballs hanging out and noses ripped off; some had pointed ears, some had human ears and some had holes for ears. Whatever they had, they could sure run like bats out of hell!

Two of them were on us in seconds. The car swerved and ran into a row of trashcans next to the warehouse. I got up and hung out of the window, pointing my rifle up toward the first one, who was groaning and slobbering at me from the roof. I pulled the trigger and the Ruger recoiled, slamming the high velocity shell into the head of the zombie. The head flew right off his shoulders and onto the cement parking lot, and the big body soon followed, making a pleasant crunching sound as it hit the ground.

Just as I was rewarding myself, the second one came up and an opening erupted inside its chest cavity. A long, black tentacle burst out and grabbed my neck. I was strangling, I couldn’t breathe and I thought I was going to pass out. I strained, with every ounce of my strength, to force the gun up and pull the trigger. Finally, as I was almost pulled outside to fall to my certain death from the speeding Mustang, I got a bead on the zombie and pulled the trigger. “Wham!� Another head was blown off, and the body hit the cement like a sack of ball bearings.

307

Meanwhile, Samantha, driving like her father, hit the first of six zombies with my precious 2006 Mustang. She had to pull some pretty sharp turns to do it, but she pulverized each one, and they were dead meat in no time, all over my wonderful paint job.

That’s when we ran out of gas. I jumped from the vehicle and dragged Samantha with me. My shells were in the trunk, locked, and I had only one shot left in my loader. I hoped these zombies were smarter than the old-fashioned kind, and that they might believe I had more ammo than I knew I had.

This wasn’t Night of the Living Dead, however, and we were soon trapped in a corner of the alley behind the warehouse. All seven of the zombies were in front of us, and each one’s chest cavity was opening to reveal the long black tentacle of doom. I knew I could get one of them, so I expected to do so, but I knew we would then become a midnight snack for the other six--or possibly something much worse.

“Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam!” The six shots rang out, and six zombie heads were blown off their muscular shoulders. Their super bodies also crumpled to the ground.

“Take him out, Jack!” I heard Bill’s voice, and I pulled the trigger.

The last zombie fell.

“Daddy!

Oh, Daddy, Samantha grabbed

thank Bill’s

goodness you neck and

came!” cried.

“Hey, I saw you leave the garage. I thought you might be

308 meeting Romeo here, so I followed you after the football game. I guess it’s a good thing I did. Say, what the hell are these things? They stink something terrible, don’t they?”

“I think we’ll have to put these boys in the trunk and burn them out in the woods,” I said, swinging my gun over my shoulder. “Sam and I will try to explain it to you on the drive out, Bill. Do you think you can keep an open mind?”

309

The Aquaphobe The blue of the sky surrounded her figure like a backdrop on the weather channel. Clouds floated above her, sea gulls zoomed down into the sea behind her, and people shouted as the radios blared a variety of summer sounds all around her. She remained motionless. He could not take his eyes from her. Her elbows were folded neatly next to her brown skin as she held the paperback and stared down into it, resting her back against the beach chair, the wide brim of her Panama hat folded over, delicately, shading her forehead; the world he was in was reflected back at him inside her large, moon-shaped sunglasses. Her muscular shoulders and thin waist were those of a true athlete. Donny, come here sweetie.

Mommy just wants you to rub oil on her before she gets in. That’s right, you’re like me. The sun bakes us, baby.

Come over and do me, honey.

He ignored the sun. It was his enemy. Sweat trickled down under his armpits as he slid his elbows disgustedly back and forth, feeling the slimy moisture as it rubbed between his flesh. He was between jobs again. This time, he slammed a full tray of spaghetti dinners down on the boss’s desk. He left with the old man staring down at his lap full of pasta and marinara sauce. His writing, too, had taken a turn for the worse. The seventeen or eighteen contests and fellowships he had applied to after obtaining his degree in creative writing had all lost, and he was

310 waiting for a sign from somewhere, anywhere, that he was still alive.

He felt like Merseault in Camus’ The Stranger. What an absurd life he was leading. His parents were both dead, leaving him shortly before his twenty-fourth birthday. He remembered it well because he had watched a Twilight Zone marathon on the ward Visitor’s Room TV, with an old woman named Rachel, who kept farting when she laughed at the Martian who held up the cookbook entitled To Serve Man. “They outta hang that sign up around here!” she spat, passing gas and waving her wrinkled hands and bony fingers up at the screen. “That nurse refuses to take my Sid to the toilet. She says he pinches her ass. So what do I find? I find him wet in his own god damned bed. To serve man—ha!”

He had stared straight up at the TV screen for hours, ignoring her, because his mother and father were dying in separate rooms. They had crashed together on I-5, going from Malibu Beach to San Diego, but now they were separated. His father died at 11:06 A.M. and his mother at midnight the same day. The marathon was still going when the doctor informed him.

Rod Serling died of lung cancer at an early age. Serling’s magazine was still going, however; he, the great new writer, had submitted twelve stories to it. Not a single one was ever published. He had watched her from shore on many occasions. She cut through the water like a seal, her bronzed back and shoulders sliced through the calm water just beyond the first curl of the waves, her legs churned up a wake of froth. His father and mother had been expert swimmers. Both lifeguards, they had met at the college pool and had even spent their honeymoon in

311 Hawaii, swimming, scuba diving and screwing until he was conceived: the child who was terrified of water.

His aqua phobia began as a slight tremor in the pit of his stomach when, at age five, he watched his parents racing in the backyard pool. He imagined a great sea monster coming from below them to engulf their bodies within its giant jaws. He could see his mother and father squashing out the sides of the green behemoth’s mouth, like white toothpaste, and all he could do was watch, powerless, in complete terror. He could not move because the water held dark, insane horrors inside its depths. If his parents even suggested that he go near the water, he would scream until they finally stood back away from him and frowned. “What’s wrong with you, Donny? The water can’t hurt you,” they would say, but his eyes would glaze over, and he would turn his back to them.

He knew where she was parked. A breeze came to caress his face, and he stood up. She would be his Muse. The freedom from his demons was just moments away. *** “Have you ever watched The Twilight Zone?” he asked.

Her wide blue eyes stared up at him. She was tied down to the chaise lounge with thin nylon cord. She could feel the spongy substance of the rubber ball between her capped teeth. The ball was ingeniously encased inside a dog’s muzzle. She tried to clamp down to release the intense pressure on her aching jaws, but she could only manage a slight movement. The ball was new. She nodded yes.

“Do you remember the one episode when the young couple is inside the soda shop waiting for the bus, and they keep playing the fortune telling machine? Each time the young

312 man puts his coin in and gets a fortune—like magic—the event comes true!” She told herself to stay calm. He was probably after money. She could give him her agent’s number and they could arrange something. Sam would think of a way to get her out of this. The guy was obviously demented. He drooled like a retard. But his face was kind of cute, in a sick way. At least she could move her hands. The nylon was loose enough that it did not cut off the circulation. “. . .and then she leaves him, but he keeps shoving quarters into the machine, and the paper fortunes keep happening, over and over again. Until the last one says . . . well, you remember. He dies. I didn’t like that part. But I do believe in fate. You are my destiny, Miss Wesley, did you know that?”

She raised her eyebrows and rolled her eyes. “What’s that? Oh, I guess I can take the gag out. But if you scream, I will have to seek alternatives,” he said, moving his hand down to his waist where a small leather holster held a revolver snugly against his thin frame.

As he took the muzzle off, he giggled. “You know where I saw the idea for this?” he asked. “Pulp Fiction. That Tarentino is a genius, don’t you think? But I really don’t believe gangsters would have such intellectual conversations, do you? No . . . you see, my father was a real gangster . . . in the Mexican Mafia . . . and he never had an intellectual thought in his entire life. He bought his way through college. In fact, until the day he and my mother were destroyed in an automobile accident, my father thought he could buy anybody and anything. But he never had a witty thing to say about gangster life. Not like Tarentino makes them talk. That’s why he’s an artist, I guess. Tarentino, that is, not my father.”

313 She felt the rush of air against her lips, and as she moved her tongue inside her mouth’s cavern, it felt dry, like the inside of a sandpaper box. Mexican Mafia? What was this guy’s problem? Could it be he didn’t want money? She cleared her throat. “Um, do you think I could have something to drink?” she asked.

He almost fell over backward reaching for a beer that was on the little table beside the Olympic pool. “Here, here you go. It’s nice and cold. I just got it from the fridge.”

She took the brown bottle from him with her two encumbered hands, took a short swig, and then she made her usual “beer taste” shudder. “I just can’t get used to this crap,” she said. “What are you doing here, creep? I suppose you realize you’ll do some hard time if they catch you.” She thought he might be rational, even though his actions were psychotic. She remembered from her college psychology class about how the truly psychotic individual lives totally inside his secret, mythological world and that the real world seems like the intruder.

He was watching her eyes. They were the same blue with that flirtatious hint of seduction twinkling back at him.

Thousands of those eyes stared back at him from the pages of Men’s magazines, and these women always laughed at him as they bent over, lifted their legs, bobbed their heads (always tucking that falling strand of hair away from their faces), danced around the room, pranced into the room, and wiggled and jiggled inside a vacuum of combustible lust. That vacuum was now inside his head.

He reached inside his corduroy jacket and felt for pills.

The hard, round ball was between his fingertips. He pulled it out and brought it to his mouth, acting as if he was clearing his throat, but he knew he was popping. Pill

314 popping. The alliteration often made him giggle to himself with pleasure. He imagined a jack-in-the-box springing out of his pocket, accompanied by insane music, with the hat of a darvon capsule. “You are going to teach me to swim,” he said.

She had won more gold medals in the Freestyle event than any other woman in Olympic history. The trophies in her parent’s den had spilled over into the living room, and she was doing a monthly commercial for several products. She had the mixture of what her agent called “sex and athleticism.”

This was the combination that best represented the American ideal during the Republican heyday. She was followed everywhere on her dates with fellow swimmers by the paparazzi, who were always ready to catch her off guard. Where the hell were they now?

“You want to learn to swim?” she laughed, tossing her short-cut blond hair. Streamlined, always streamlined.

“You know, there are official ways of doing that sort of thing,” she began. “How in heaven’s name do you come off . . .?”

“It can be the difference between life and death,” he broke in, looking down at his hands. “I have to overcome a great fear of the water. My heart begins pounding in my chest, I can’t breathe, and my mind is taken over by strange visions. You can’t understand, but it is living hell. But . . . but when I saw you in the Summer Games . . . you were so fluid . . . so god damned natural in there! I knew you could teach me not to be afraid.”

She cocked her head sideways at him. “Work, work, work. That’s all it is. I look natural because I swim more miles than the astronauts have zoomed around in space.

You don’t look natural until you’ve gone beyond the state of naturalness and into obsession.” She was getting

315 heated up in spite of herself. It was the mixture of fear and resentment that drove her to open up to this pervert.

It was also the strange look of dread in his eyes. She could never resist a man who looked that way, ever since she was a little girl and played “nurse” when the boys played their war games in the backyard.

“I have aqua phobia. I believe if you can teach me to like being in the water I will be able to overcome my writer’s block as well. I have not written a piece in over six months.”

A writer. That explained it. Probably some journalist hired

by Hank Reynolds, the TV sportscaster and her archenemy, to fuck with her mind. Some joke. Ever since she refused to go out with Reynolds, he had been harassing her with his columns in the paper and with his practical jokes: goldfish in her home pool; a bouquet of jellyfish left at her apartment door with a sign that read, “you swim like they fuck;” and now this, probably a psycho impersonator paid to scare the shit out of her before the big meet with China.

“Okay. Who put you up to this? Hank Reynolds? Was it Hank?”

He stared at her.

“Well? What the hell gives? This is more than a practical joke. Who sent you?

“I am alone. Don’t you understand? You can save my life,” he said.

“Life? Are you insane? You could get life for doing this kind of thing, buddy.” She moved her hands inside the nylon. “Get me out of this and let me go home. I’ll forget

316 it all happened. joke.”

Honest.

I’ll write it off as a bad

He stared. “You won’t help me?” He reached down to his gun. “Are you certain?”

She froze. Maybe she could play along until he came to his senses. Perhaps she could even get him to like the water. He was obviously a demented sort. “All right. Get me out of this crap, and I’ll show you some things,” she said.

He smiled. “See, I told you it would be you.” He reached over and untied her hands and feet. “There. Now I’ll take off these over clothes and you can teach me.” He began to shuck his slacks and jacket. Underneath, his thin body was pale in the moonlight, like the body of some rare butterfly just out of its cocoon. His wispy arms and slender neck made her think of a painting she had once seen in the Louvre. It was a Renaissance oil of a male wood sprite standing alone in the forest as the moon shone down on his young body.

She was so brown. He was so white. Yin and Yang. The Divine Opposites. Donny, Donny. We won’t hurt you, honey. Take your trunks off. See, Daddy has his off. Vea cómo es el papá grande? Watch me touch him. Vea, él está consiguiendo más grande! Let me do it to you.

Donny, sweetie, come in the water with us. The water looked black like ink. It harbored death. He watched her rump as she walked to the edge of the pool. He felt himself harden. Donny, now isn’t that fun? I told you it was fun! Now . . . ahora deje a mama poner su boca abajo . . . y . . . oh, bebé, usted puede conseguir grande también!

317 She took off her shorts and was in her orange suit again.

She felt tired. She swam all day at the beach and this was just more water. “We all came from water, you do realize that,” she said, turning to face him. “Whether you believe Darwin’s evolution or Creation, it is assumed that before we were, there was water. We live in it before we are born. We’re natural swimmers inside our own mothers.

Don’t you see? What is your name, anyway?”

“Donaldo,” he said.

“Donald, most of the planet is covered by water. Without it, no life could exist. Rain, ocean, river, it all feeds into our eternal struggle for life. When I swim, I feel like I’m struggling against death and time. But the water keeps me up, boy, she never lets me sink as long as I am fluid with her. The Easterners are such damned good swimmers because they know how to be at-one-with.

That’s what I think, Donald. I am at one with water.”

His smile was crooked. “Yeah, I guess so. But I can’t think about anything but death when I look at it. It feels like a tomb when I get in.”

“Come here, Donald. Get into the water with me. I’ll be gentle. We can get to know what it’s like, this water.

We’ll make friends, so to speak.”

She was enjoying herself. “Come here and I’ll show you.”

The vision hit him, or was it the pill? Her hair became writhing serpents, wriggling and hissing on her head. He stepped back. “Show me? Show me what?” He reached for the gun. “No, you swim. I want you to swim for me!

Take off that suit and swim for me.” He brought the 9mm out of its holster and aimed it at her. “You heard me, get it off!”

318 The breeze hit her bare breasts and she shivered. She pushed out into the water to get away from him. The strokes she made were gentle, and she could feel his eyes on her body as she churned her legs above the green bottom of the pool. Waves of light shimmered on her shapely white bottom. She was in her own element. *** It seemed like hours had passed. She was still swimming, effortlessly it seemed. When life is at stake the body can be a miraculous instrument. She actually felt she was getting stronger with each lap. She turned down, sprang from the wall, pushing her muscular legs with vital energy, reaching out for more . . . always more . . . her father called her the “lady torpedo.”

Underwater, she saw his shadow in the shallow end. His two pale legs . . . the erection . . . she was no stranger to that. Reynolds had taken his pants off beside the pool and showed her his . . . they were all exhibitionists, these men, and yet they blamed us. She turned around under the water and swam toward him. Her lungs were powerful.

He was frozen in time like the ice of Xanadu. She was so tired she just wanted to get it all over with. They always wanted it . . . in the end; it was all they ever wanted from her. She was their athletic trophy to be seduced. She was almost at his legs. She could feel the warmth now. The heat of the male is tremendous. She could always feel the other swimmers when they were male. Michael Phelps was said to radiate like a torch under water.

Donny, you come here to us. Miguel and Francisco have paid good to see you do your stuff. Get your little ass in this water, boy! La mama desea conseguir muchacho cogido, grande. You see her? She’s hot! Aiiiiii! Come

319 and get it, you little fucker! Watch, Miguel! Mira, Cisco? Él tiene grande, apenas como su papa.

She took him in her mouth under water. His member was really big for a skinny guy. She could barely get her mouth halfway down the shaft.

He held the gun and pointed it down . . . at her bobbing head . . . feeling the motion of the water against his thighs . . . the ripples of joy undulated inside his body . . . life and death . . . Yin and Yang . . . he looked up into the California night sky . . . the moon was full . . . he looked down at her head again . . . Donny, usted viene para mí, bebé . . . his fear had left him . . . he would write again . . . he thought about O.J., TV, the Mafia, Tarentino, Pulp Fiction . . . he pulled the trigger . . . the water turned crimson below his waist . . . he exhaled deeply. No temor, he whispered, “no fear.” The gun was at his head.

320

The Reluctant Zombie My name is Lance Corporal Daniel Prophet. I served with Easy Company, Second Battalion, Second Marine Regiment during the summer of 2007 in Mahmudiya, Zadon, and Falluja. I am now in a freight box headed for Dover Air Force Base. From there, they will ship me to my home town, San Diego, California. My body is 22 years old, but my mind is timeless. That’s correct. I am one of your fallen heroes. How can I be talking to you like this? Let me tell you one little secret they don’t tell you when you’re alive: You don’t get to see the big picture until you’re dead.

For example, I cannot leave this body of mine until I have been given a proper burial. This doesn’t mean that I need a big deal burial. No, it just means I must be given the respect that the dead deserve. And, in this instance, it means the respect of being allowed to return home. That’s my problem. Since the United States Government does not want you to see my dead body, for political reasons, I am being transported home as freight. That’s correct. I am now right next to boxes of beef jerky, canned ham, condoms and new issues of the horror magazine, Shroud, which has an awesome story in it by Brian Keene about a zombie that loses his will to kill. The reluctant zombie-that’s me!

I read mostly science fiction and horror when I was alive.

I used to get a lot of it off the Internet, as most

321 publications now have their stories in full online. As a communications technician, I was able to use the Internet quite often as part of my job. That’s part of the reason why I now have this ability to see the big picture now that I’m dead. The Buddhists must be partially correct, also, because the book I was reading when my Armored Personnel Carrier hit an IED (Improvised Explosive Device) was an old one by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Called Slaughterhouse Five; or the Children’s Crusade: a DutyDance with Death. By the way, the word “crusade” was blacked out on my copy because the government censors did not want the word to be used over in the Middle East.

The Buddhists say that the last thing you’re concentrating on when you die determines what you will be in the next life. I was concentrating on this book wherein Billy Pilgrim, a sensitive Chaplain’s Assistant in World War Two, is able to slip in an out of time, and he simultaneously lives as a human zoo specimen on the planet Tralfamadore and as a prisoner of war inside a slaughter house below the ground in Dresden, Germany. It’s an awesome book. I learned that we experience life from what Vonnegut calls our “peephole” of reality.

Paul Lazarro was Billy Pilgrim’s nemesis in the novel by Vonnegut. Sergeant Steve Haggard was mine. Steve was like many of the other big guys I knew growing up. He liked to pick on small guys. In fact, I joined the Marines because I was small, and I wanted them to make me a man, as they claimed they could do in their ads. However, although I did become much stronger, and I had big muscles, I was still a short dude, only 5 feet 3 inches tall.

Sergeant Haggard liked to play practical jokes on me. He was always putting itching powder in my desert boots or holding a Chinese Fire Drill, whereby his squad would wait until I was on the commode and they would toss a burning paper bag under the stall and Haggard would yell “Fire!”

322 The rest of the squad then threw helmets filled with water over the stall and onto my head. Once, when I was doing duty in the mess hall, Sergeant Haggard super glued some silverware to the table top. When I went to pick-up the spoons, knives and forks to take them to the scullery, he laughed his ass off, as I tried to pry them off the table.

Haggard, my squad leader, always forced me to sit near the center of the APC whenever we traveled in Iraq. This was the most dangerous spot, and this was where I lost my head from flying shrapnel. They sewed my head back on my body for the trip home. I never got to kill a single insurgent.

But Haggard’s final joke was to fill-out the chit that sent my body state-side. Instead of having my body shipped to a funeral home in San Diego, he had it sent to Sea World, marked as “Killer Whale Food.” Thus, instead of having my body get the proper ceremony it deserved, I was headed to an amusement park. This also proved that Haggard had become a psycho.

I can feel them hauling me off the plane. After the bumpy ride, I can hear the top of my container being pried open.

I can see light pouring down on my face, and my infinite mind can see the person bending over me. She is about 25 years old, blonde, and she begins to scream as she sees that I am not sea food and that I am naked. People begin to scurry around my box, and then someone with a suit on says, “Ship him to the coroner’s office. There’s no return address on this shipping bill. Where the hell did he come from?”

I have ended up in a poorly constructed, refrigerated trailer outside the San Diego City Coroner’s Office. I can hear the rats eating into my box, and I want to say that I am frightened, but it’s actually kind of cool to be in here.

323 It’s like the end of some horror story that I would have read when I was alive. Maybe something by H. P. Lovecraft or George Orwell.

As I pointed out, it is now my duty to haunt you in your world. I will begin with Steve Haggard. He will see me in his dreams over in Iraq, and this will lead to his getting a mental discharge, but he won’t get one cent of disability because the shrinks will claim he was crazy before he came into the Marine Corps, and it’s actually true. He played many other pranks on animals and humans when he was a civilian. As a result, Steve will get drunk on leave on a half-day fishing boat out of San Diego, and he will jump overboard, where he will be eaten by sharks. We Buddhists call this type of revenge “karmic justice.”

As for the rest of you, I will also enter your dreams, showing you pictures from the dark side of our global quest for wealth, power and industrialized greed. These are pictures that were taken by a Canadian who wanted to capture the real scenes of environmental devastation caused by Globalization. He called it Manufactured Landscapes. He said his epiphany to take these pictures came as he was driving his car, with its plastic steering wheel, and its gasoline, and its oil, and all the other connections he personally had to our petroleum-based economy.

But I’m not buried yet. You could discover me and give me my burial. There’s still time for you to wake up and use your infinite mind and forget your lousy peepholes.

There’s still time to release me. Are we there yet?

324

The Train Ride All experience, according to the Existentialists, can be evaluated by how it affects our senses. In other words, the more sensually stimulating the varieties of the person’s experience, the better the total experience. I know Sartre and Camus would have chosen to travel by train rather than plane. In fact, it was Camus’ choice of riding in his publisher’s new sports convertible over his normally conventional train ride into Paris, which led to the great author’s premature death at the height of his career. I did not die on my last train trip beginning on Christmas Eve but someone did.

As we crossed San Felipe Pueblo, an Indian reservation in New Mexico, it was Christmas morning. The train stopped, for no apparent reason, and we were mumbling to each other about the problems we were having with the power shutting off whenever we came to a stop. Our car’s conductor said this would be repaired at Gallup, but when we stopped at this particular spot in what Camus most certainly would have called “absurdity,” the first thing we thought was that the train had broken down permanently.

Not a good feeling. However, when the word about what had actually occurred came filtering around the train (we actually overheard one conductor telling another one before the official announcement came over the intercom); there was more of a pallor that drifted down upon us.

325 It seems a young tribal woman had chosen that Christmas morning to commit suicide by stepping in front of our train! Why do I mention Camus and this “accident”? The coincidence of my Existential experience that day included my reading Le Chute (The Fall) on my little Franklin e-book reader, and the even more stimulating experience of just having read the part in the novel when the narrator (Mr. Clamence, a Parisian attorney in exile in Amsterdam) is explaining to the reader about crossing a bridge in Paris when he sees a young woman commit suicide by jumping into the Seine. At the exact moment I completed the paragraph describing this “turning point” in the book, we had our own suicide on the train! Not only that but the battery warning indicator came on in my e-book reader, and I was also frozen in my novel.

Of course, this would not be an Existential Moment for anybody else on that train because they weren’t reading Camus, and they were certainly not at this specific part of the novel. It’s what the late psychoanalyst, Dr. Carl Jung, called “synchronicity,” a symbolic moment in time when something happens that has meaning only for you. Not only is it important to you, it is important only in the way you interpret it for your existential reality. Thus, this writing allows me to make meaning out of my existential reality that day and to share it with you. Of course, it’s up to you to recognize those moments in your own life that are just as existentially meaningful, and then to share them with others, so we can all be “brothers and sisters in absurdity,” so to speak, and that guys like Camus and Samuel Beckett might not have died in vain! I shall be referring to Camus a lot in this essay, so bear with me. As a philosophical student of the Absurd, the extreme importance of connecting the dots for you cannot be emphasized more. If you are to do your own “absurd

326 hunting,” then you will (no, must) learn how to spot absurdity when you run into it.

Yes, the suicide of the young American Native (or is it Native American?) woman was the apex of the absurd that trip, but we must also discover how trains—in general— and trips on trains—specifically—give one a dalliance with Existential heaven. Of course, combining Existential and heaven would not be proper to guys like Camus, as he was an atheist, but I believe he would have understood my meaning. For example, the structure and purpose of a train is absurd in and of itself. People walk past me, staggering like drunken sailors (they even make jokes about the experience in absurd walking by saying, “I didn’t have anything to drink!”) And, nobody learns how to walk on a train, even though I did because I used logic (the conductors do it all the time, so I’ll just watch them walk down the passageways) to keep my arms extended on the uppermost luggage compartments as I walked, thereby eliminating the “swaying.” Naturally, very short people and children are not so lucky. They are the futile, walking drunkards, condemned to sway in this foolish condition forever, it seems.

Trains are also moving forward to a destination, yet they loco mote by sliding on parallel rails that never meet. This locomotion causes the absurd swaying, and it also makes you believe you are sometimes going in circles rather than straight, and that these rails were put down by some kind of sadistic beast. Thus, the sounds of the “clackety-clack” and the insane pockets of intense pressure and dangerously sliding doors between cars of this slithering, snake-like monster, combine to produce the sounds we all remember long after the experience. But, what of the sound made by the young woman who jumped in front of us? Nobody heard her. How could they? The train was a

327 beast bearing down on that peaceful pueblo in New Mexico. Perhaps it was this “monstrosity” that attracted the young woman? Didn’t Camus say that, indeed, people never reflect on enough reasons why someone commits suicide? Perhaps there are thousands of reasons! Perhaps there is none.

Camus also said that before one can become a true philosopher, one must decide between suicide and life because this is the only decision that one has any control over—existentially speaking, that is.

328

Killer Angels Moonlight Shore was flying back to California from a weekend benefit concert for the homeless in New Orleans.

As the lead singer in the all-woman band “Killer Angels,” she was used to these flights, where the term “redeye” often had a double meaning for musicians. She and her three partners lit up in the women’s restroom in the New Orleans airport, where their eyes took on the redness from good ganja rather than from the late hour.

They had partied all night after their gig in the park at New Orleans Square. They topped it off by running topless through the city’s cemetery next to where Anne Rice used to live. The large purple glass beads Moonlight wore around her neck eventually brought blood to her chest, after the cops started chasing them through the graveyard. The Mardi Gras beads kept slapping against her, and she had to jump over several tombstones and a few passed out vagrants before she was able to see the exit on Bourbon Street back to their hotel in the French Quarter. Just before she reached the exit, a huge mausoleum stood before her. It had the statue of a little child, a girl, at the top. Moonlight fell down, and when she looked up, she saw the face of a tall black policeman staring at her from out of the mausoleum’s confines. She got up and ran, full speed, until she was able to exit the cemetery and head up Dauphine Street. Moon was certain that black policeman could have caught up with her, but he never did. Cindy, the band’s lead guitar, got a ticket

329 because she refused to run from anything, but the other three girls made it out okay.

Now they were onboard Flight 262 heading back to San Francisco, sitting on the aisle of the First Class Section, tuned into some Death Metal sounds on their iPods, not the elevator music the airlines provided. Blood Coven for Moonlight, God Dethroned for Cindy, Victims of Eternal Decay for Mouse and Viral Load for Jessica. The rest of the first classers were business men of varying ages, mostly drab and artless types wearing traveling gray suits and tapping away at their laptops and BlackBerries. Moonlight did spot one young stud who was sporting some pretty comfortable looking yellow Crocs on his feet.

“Miss, may I have a small clip of your hair?” the stewardess (Moonlight refused to call them flight attendants. How in the hell were they ever attending to the flying part of these trips?) was asking Moonlight, and Moon didn’t hear her until she pulled the earphones down off her head.

“What’s up?” Moonlight asked, her seventeen metallic piercings sparkling radiantly under the lights of the rows of seats. Moonlight, like her band partners, had lip, nose, ear, eyebrow, chin, labial, and nipple metal of various sizes and colors punctured through skin that made their orangestreaked hair look rather conservative.

“I said, I need to take a sample of your hair. We are under orders from the Federal Aviation Administration to make an FBI file of DNA for every passenger who flies with us. It’s to increase the security for all of us, don’t you know?” said the stew, her phony, bleached-white teeth and blond Prince Valiant hairdo dueling with Moonlight’s

330 metal

and

orange,

electroshock

do.

Moonlight hated these overpaid flying whores. Cindy, for kicks, once offered a thousand bucks to one of them if she would get on the flight mike and read a stanza from one of their latest songs, “Vote till You Vomit.” She did it, and it was a trip listening to the little Southern gal reading, “Smell the corruption, taste the fear, vote till you vomit, vote till you’re queer!” This one, too, had that nasal twang of the Old South. “Sure, how much you need, honey?”

“I always wanted to see if I could fuck up a DNA test,” Moonlight laughed, and pulled out a good five or six strands of orange hair and handed them to the frowning stew.

“I don’t believe y’all need to be vulgah,” she said, tossing her head and moving on to the next passenger.

Moonlight thought she could finally relax for the trip, but it was not to be so. The cabin speaker began to bark out with the captain’s voice.

“I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen. But we have to ask one more favor of you before we climb to cruising altitude. The attendants are now coming around to take samples from one of your fingernails. This sample will also be used by our Federal Government to establish a database of DNA. In addition, the attendants will scan the iris of your eye to take a digital imprint. Did you know that your iris leaves an imprint as distinguishable as a fingerprint? Just think of it as your tax dollars at work fighting international terrorists!”

The patriotic tone of the captain’s voice got under Moonlight’s skin, but she, along with all the rest of the redeye passengers did their duty and submitted to the

331 personal probing, although the young stud in Crocs, who was rather crocked himself said, “Can I get a picture of your boobs? I’m keeping a database of my own for security purposes.”

It was about an hour later that Moonlight heard the first commotion. One of the old business guys was standing up at his seat, jumping up and down and shouting, “Ouch!

Wow, it stings.

My legs are stinging!”

The stew ran down the aisle to his seat. “What’s the matter, sir?” she asked, and Moon thought she could see a slight upturn on the corner of the bitch’s mouth, as if it amused her to see this guy doing a rain dance in the aisle.

“I don’t know. I was just sitting here reading the paper, and this sharp, stabbing pain entered my legs. It felt like someone was poking me with a damned knife!” he spat, rubbing frantically up and down his trouser legs.

“I’m sure you’ve just got some cramps or perhaps your legs fell asleep. That’s just like pins and needles!” she admonished him like an old school teacher.

“Hey, I know when my damned leg’s asleep! This was like a knife stabbing into me,” he said, but his voice was losing its earlier frantic treble. “But . . . it’s subsiding now,” he mumbled, sitting tenderly back down in his seat.

“I’m sure you’ll be fine. Do you want me to bring you a drink or something?” the stew asked, trying to make amends.

“No, I don’t want anything from you,” the guy said, and he

332 pushed

his

seat

out

as

far

as

it

would

extend.

Moonlight thought this trip was getting pretty weird. But, about ten minutes later, weird was not exactly what was in store for them. Three of the business guys got up from their seats, and, one by one, they each put their hands on the others’ shoulders to create a conga line right there in the aisle between the seats! These middle-aged fat guys were dancing, in perfect unison, to some strange music coming out through the speaker system of the aircraft.

Not only did they dance, but they also began singing in perfect pitch!

“Hazing clouds ears. Find my aren't so clear.

I'm

rain on my head. Empty thoughts fill my shade by the moonlight, why my thoughts Demon's dreaming, breathe in, breathe in. coming back again.”

They kept dancing in the aisle, up and down, back into coach, and finally returning to first class. Cindy turned around in her seat and whispered to Moonlight, “Hey Moonie!

You know that song?”

Moonlight

shook

her

head

no.

“It’s Voodoo by that nineties group, Godsmack. I swear to God!” she said, nodding her blonde head until her metal began to rattle.

Voodoo? What the hell was going on here? Moonlight was tripping over the three stooges as they danced past her.

She had made a sudden decision. The only way to prove her theory was to get a look inside the flight cabin.

Something told her that whatever was going on had its cause inside that cockpit. Ain’t it always a cock that’s

333 behind the evil in the world? Moon was holding her mouth with her hands as she walked forward to the toilet. The First Class Restrooms were right next to the flight cabin, and Moonlight thought if she could get over there she might be able to look at what was happening inside that cockpit. She didn’t believe it could be true, but it was worth a try. Of course, it was probably just the weed they had smoked. It wasn’t the first time the ganja had gotten them into trouble, but this wasn’t heavy acid or peyote, this was just a little Maui Wowee, for shitsakes!

The cockpit was of the extremely heavy metal, post-9/11 variety, and it actually looked to Moonlight like a bank vault door. She was standing inside the Women’s toilet listening. She heard more music coming from the speakers, “I'm not the one who's so far away when I feel the snakebite enter my veins. Never did I want to be here again and I don't remember why I came... Moon took a deep breath. “Oh shit, she whispered, “Not snakes on a plane!”

Suddenly, the music stopped, and Moonlight could hear the big door being opened. Slowly and deftly she cracked her flimsy toilet door so she could see. The Prince Valiant stew was at the door, pulling it open. Moonlight could see inside the cabin, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

The pilot and co-pilot were in front, and the navigator sat just behind them in his little seat. But the music was certainly playing, and it was that creepy Voodoo shit. Just as the door was about to be pulled shut by Valiant, Moonlight caught a glimpse of something on the cockpit shelf near the instrument display panel. They looked like little miniatures of some kind. What the hell? They were little straw dolls. Voodoo dolls! And then the door shut.

334 Moonlight exited the toilet about five minutes later, and she headed straight for each of her band members seats.

She said, “Meet me in the back near the bar,” and they followed her.

Standing around the circular bar, Moonlight began to tell them what she had seen inside the cockpit. She raised her eyebrows when she came to the words “Voodoo dolls.”

“Are you tripping?” said Cindy. “We just came from New Orleans, for chrissakes! The pilots probably bringing those dolls back for his kids.”

“And those executives dancing in the aisles? And what about the stabbing pain in that one guy’s leg?” Moon’s voice took on a frantic earnestness. She didn’t know why she thought this was real, but she did. Her folks were old Berkeley Hippies, but she was a Pisces, and she had great intuition about these things.

Mouse spoke for the first time. “Look, there’s a reasonable explanation for all that shit. These guys were probably high on something they got in the French Quarter. And the pain could have been circulation cut off in his leg. Get real, Moonie.”

“Okay, okay. Lay off me, will you?” said Moonlight, turning around and heading back to her seat. The others followed, and as they passed her, they each patted her on the head, as if she were their overly imaginative little sister.

“Fuck off!” was all that Moon could muster.

Moonlight and her band partners then were able to fall asleep. In fact, their sleep came after a strange, yellow cloud wafted out of the cabin’s air conditioning ducts next

335 to the lights above them and then the dream overtook their restlessness.

When Moonlight opened her eyes, she looked around to find that she was all alone inside the airplane. “Oh shit, where the hell is everybody?” she yelled, but there was no noise at all inside the plane. Down through the coach section and up into first class, not one seat was taken.

She looked outside the windows, but it was pitch dark.

They were standing still, but where were they? Suddenly, Moonlight could hear the big cockpit door begin to open.

In the dark confines of the deathly still airplane, the door sounded like a tomb opening to another world.

As the door was finally open, from out of the smoky darkness came the tall figure of the captain. He looked like any ordinary captain, with the scrambled eggs on the bill of his cap and the four bars on his shoulders. He was also smoking a briar pipe. However, he was a black man, and when he sat down next to her, Moonlight felt a strange emotion coming over her. This man had the same face of the cop who had chased her earlier the other evening in New Orleans. She got a good look at him as she tripped over one of the mausoleum’s front steps. She glanced back and there was that same face. It had a pink scar that ran from the top of his temple down to the cleft in his chin.

“Ah, Miss Shore. I see you are finally awake. I trust you had a good rest?” said the captain, and his voice had the sing-song inflection of one of those Reggae singers like Bob Marley or Toots Hibbert.

“You’re damned right I’m awake! Where the hell are we, and where are my friends?” Moonlight croaked, feeling the

336 bile

rise

into

her

throat

like

venom.

“I am going to show you in one moment, dearest. But first, let me ask you something. What makes you the saddest about this cruel world? Be truthful. I know your insides better than you might believe I do.” He smiled, and his teeth were gold-capped in the front.

Moonlight suddenly began to feel more trusting. This guy was working on an emotional level, and it put her at ease.

“I don’t know. I guess it’s the kids. All those kids who starve and are taken off to fight in wars before they can even become children.”

“Oh yes! I knew it. I knew you were the one. I needed your hair and your nails to prove it. As you ran through that graveyard, I saw you, and I knew. I knew you would become our best Vodoun Priestess. Come, I shall show you your task.” The captain stood up, took Moonlight by the hand and led her to the door of the airliner. The Prince Valiant blonde was waiting to open the door, and Moon could feel the warm, Caribbean air on her face as it opened outward.

The sight was magnificent to behold. All around her, there were thousands, perhaps millions of small children, standing and waiting, singing and dancing, on clouds!

And, far above them, on the most magnificent bandstand ever contrived, were the other members of her band, “Killer Angels.”

“Here, let me lead you,” said the captain, and his uniform suddenly transformed into the mighty breastplate and toga of a warrior. The dark wings sprang out of his brawny shoulders, and he lifted her, up, up, into the night sky.

337 They glided, ever so softly in the misty air that smelled of tropical fruits and flowers, and they came down on the stage. The circular bandstand was woven around with thousands of flowers and smiling, living cupids. The little angels shot harmless arrows out over the audience of kids, where they turned into candy, falling like rain all over their tiny heads. They squealed with joy as Moonlight stepped up to the mike in the center of the stage.

Cindy, Mouse and Jessica were all ready to play. The kids were yelling, and the night was warm with passionate, tropical weather. Before she sang, Moonlight, her eyes pooling with tears, yelled out to anyone who would listen, “Why are we here?

What happened to us?”

The voice may have been the captain’s or it might have been some greater voice from beyond, but it spoke with assurance, and it spoke with authority. “Your flight crashed in the Pacific Ocean outside New Orleans. You lived your lives to scare the hell out of the straight types who never listen. Now you are with the Vodoun in Paradis! You deserve to forever play to the children you mourned!”

The music they played was otherworldly, but it rocked, and it rolled, out over the screaming laughter of the children who had never survived on earth. They had never survived the bombs and the destruction or the starvation, but here they could just be children and enjoy themselves in the scary sounds of the “Killer Angels.” And, for each song that Moonlight played, one child was saved from slaughter in Africa and in the Middle East. One more tiny angel was born into the frightening joy of the Caribbean heaven of a young woman’s death dream.

338

Jim Musgrave is an author and college educator in San Diego, California. His recent non-fiction title, The Digital Scribe: a Writer's Guide to Electronic Media (AP Professional, ISBN 0-12-512255-1) has been internationally published. He has a M.A. degree in Creative Writing from San Diego State University. He was awarded the “Ebook of the Year Award, 2001-2002” from Bookbooters.com for his thriller, Russian Wolves. In addition, Mr. Musgrave has finished as a Finalist in the New Century Writer Awards for his novel excerpt, Iron Maiden.

Runner-Up in the $10,000 Annual Heekin Foundation Awards for New Fiction Writers (1994). He has published short fiction in many literary journals, including: San Diego Writer's Monthly, Shroud Anthology Beneath the Surface, Stone Magazine, FirstDraft, Sniplits Audio Short Stories 2 Go, Back Channels, Pacific Review, California Quarterly and Cowles Mountain Journal. He has also been published at CIC Publishers with four novels: Sins of Darkness, Russian Wolves, Iron Maiden and Lucifer’s Wedding and a collection of short fiction, The President’s Parasite and Other Stories.

Mr. Musgrave’s story, “Speculum” was an Honorable Mention in the Fog City Writer’s Awards, and “Turning the Law Wheel” was an Honorable Mention in the Cedar Hill Press Short Fiction Contest.